Boston City Council, MA April 2017, 25 Apr 2017

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From YouTube: Committee on Ways & Means on April 25, 2017

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Dockets #0536-0543, 0550-0552, 0559- FY18Budget: Boston Public Schools- Overview (including Various Revolving Funds)

A

Good morning, everyone, my name, is Marcie Olmo, chairman of ways and means, and the district 9 city councilor, representing Austin and Brighton today is Tuesday April 25th.

A

We are here with the superintendent and his team from Boston Public School Department regarding the bps budget overview for FY 18 dockets, zero, five, three six through zero five, three eight orders for the FY 18 operating budget, including annual appropriations for the BART mental operations, annual appropriation for the school department and appropriation for other post-employment benefits; dockets, zero, five: three: nine: two: zero five: four three capital budget appropriations, including loan orders and lease and purchase agreements I, am joined in order of their arrival by my colleagues to my left, vice chairman of education at large city, councilor, anis or sabe Jorge to my right, the chairman of Education councilor Tito Jackson to my far left councillor Josh alaikum and at-large councillor Michael Flaherty and behind me, councillor, Matt O'malley I'd like to remind folks that this hearing is being both recorded and broadcast on our CN channel 8 and Comcast I'm.

A

Sorry, Comcast channel, 8, r, CN 82. Anyone wishing to provide public testimony can sign in to my left by the front door. Please state your name affiliation in residence and up finally, I ask everyone to please silence any electronic devices and, as we start off, I want to hand it over to superintendent joined by the budget executive director of school finance, Ellen, Lawrence and Nate cooter deputy executive director of school finance want to welcome you to the chamber today and look forward to your presentation.

B

Are the introduction, but this morning I am joined by our CFO of Boston Public Schools Eleanor Lawrence, who will speak after me and I'll fill the deputy CFO Nate cooter again good morning, members of the City Council. Today we kick off a two-month process to review the school department's budget approved by the Boston School Committee I want to start by thanking the school committee as well as the students, the parents, teachers and others who care so deeply about our schools and provide as valuable feedback in our process.

B

Up to this point, our budget process starts very early on in school year year. As early as September from central office. We move to the school process before we even take it to this, the School Committee. We have greatly appreciated the thoughtful public dialogue which has already resulted in adjustments to our proposal for next school year before diving into details. I want to provide some context around this year's budget. First of all, it is the largest budget in bps history. It provides the most money ever to our schools.

B

It provides the most learning time ever available to our students and provides per pupil funds started envy of many of our big-city peers. With this budget we're going to make the investments that are right for a district and for our students, our four-year graduation rate, has climbed to distort 42.4%. We need to be very proud of that. For the first time ever, we now have 46 schools designated as level one and level two, the husks, the state's top two tiers for accountability.

B

This 1.06 1 billion budget dollar budget, which will pre present, is not just about funding support for our schools. It is about equity. It's about creating a sustainable financial plan that aligns to our core values of equity coherence. Innovation ensures that every single student has an opportunity to succeed.

B

The fairest way to do that is through our weighted student funding formula. While we are constantly making adjustments to improve wsf is by far the most equitable way to distribute money to our schools. Simply put dollar follows the students, but those dollars are weighted based on student needs, our highest need. Students get the most resources as they should. We have worked very hard to produce a budget that is fair and equitable, one that continues to provide our schools and necessary resources to offer all our students a high-quality education.

B

I want to thank the City of Boston I want to thank mayor Walsh for putting aside the forty million dollars more for next year as compared to this year, despite declining federal funding and shrinking state aid, there is a lot that is unknown about our federal funding, so I want to thank the city. I want to thank the mayor for their confidence in us to allocate the resources needed for our students. I want to stress that overall, funding directed at schools in this upcoming budget will rise by nearly four percent.

B

This translates to a twenty five million dollar increase directly to schools over this fiscal year. Our proposed fiscal year 18 budget will make some very key strategic investments that will greatly improve the outcome of our students. Let me speak to a few of them number one: we're making historical investment to extend the school day, we're investing fourteen million dollars, in addition of additional funds, to give fifteen thousand students from kindergarten to eighth grade a hundred twenty hours of learning time that is equivalent to twenty added school days.

B

With this expansion, bps will have implemented ELT extended learning time in 57 schools serving 23,000 students in just three years. A second investment is we're going to continue strengthening our excellence for all for next year. We're increasing our investment to a total of two million dollar in this groundbreaking initiative that offers students in fourth through fifth grade the same rigorous instruction, enriched learning opportunities as those students who may be in a Vance work class number three: we're providing significant resources initiatives designed to give specialized services to some of our most vulnerable students.

B

We have targeted 1.2 million dollar investment to approximately 3,000 students out. We I have identified in the district as experiencing homelessness, and we know that there might be more number 4. We are going to provide additional supports or level three four and five schools we're providing a wide range of differentiated services and supports to the work of improving our lowest performing schools, totaling approximately fifteen million dollars.

B

In addition, we've created a 1.25 million dollar reserve targeted for low level, three four and five schools with declining enrollment and, lastly, BPS will be spending approximately twenty thousand dollars per child all in when compared, which is much more than many of our large urban school districts at BPS. We firmly believe in giving parents a voice in where their students attend school.

B

To make this possible. We have adopted the weighted student funding system in which, as I explained earlier, the dollars all the students, when enrollment declines at a school central office, works closely with those schools to approximately adjust staffing. There are safeguards in place, assist schools with a decline enrollment, including sustainability allocations or otherwise known as soft landings and other reserves are used throughout the budgeting process. We have also supported school communities that have requested to expand grades in recent years.

B

As a result, we have we have shifts in which, in we have shifts in which schools our students attend. So we're pleased to say, and because of such changes, we are anticipating six additional students to be attending level, 1 and level 2 schools and ultimate. Isn't that what we want? We want our students to be attending the highest quality schools.

B

We are anticipating again 600 additional students attending level 1 and level 2 schools at the same time, we're still being mindful that we must also support those schools are losing enrollment because of what we heard from the School Committee in our community in February in March, we have modified our original proposal to include a new 1.25 million dollar reserve to support our low-performing schools, which are experiencing declines enrollment. Our district has been, and remains fully committed to supporting these schools and I hope that these funds will reinforce existing supplemental resources to those schools.

B

In addition, in past years, we have received more external funds than projected. If that happens again, we are committed to even further investing in our level three four and five schools in closing I like to reiterate our confidence in this budget proposal. We believe that investments proposed will help us continue our shared efforts to close opportunity and achievement gaps. I turn over to Eleanor.

B

C

You dr. Chang good morning councillors I want to start by assuring you we've heard the Chairman's suggestion that we keep our presentations to ten minutes for most of our hearings, but also his suggestion that we go into a little more detail at this. Our first hearing to give you a broad overview of the bps budget,.

C

As dr. Chang mentioned, Mayor Walsh's FY 18 budget proposal includes a projected 40 million dollar increase for VPS. Our appropriation is 1.06 1 billion dollars before collective bargaining and 1.08 1 million after we started off to design this budget with two very significant and very large financial priorities.

C

First of major investment to extend the school day and second, maintaining our current school funding, otherwise known as WS, F and I'm, proud to say this budget proposal accomplishes both of those goals. You've also heard us talk about our long-term financial planning efforts. We're also pleased that this budget begins to reflect some of that work. Paying off. We have operational efficiencies, both in transportation and central office, reflected it's part of. What's allowing us to propose this level of investment I.

C

Will remind you briefly how to think about the billion dollars that we spend at bps, we think of it broadly in three categories: the largest are dollars that go to schools in school budgets. There's a second, very significant category, represented here on the graph in blue of what we call school services budgeted centrally. These are people and things that you will see when you walk through schools, but that happen to sit on a central budget.

C

Those are things like transportation, portions of special education that are not on school budgets, facilities, etc, and then the smallest is central office, which is about 6.5 percent of spending.

C

Here on slide 4, you can see a one-page summary or overview of our proposed budget for next year. This is a slightly different way of looking at the bps budget than we have in our official tables. We've put this together this year because we hope it's more intuitive both for you and the public to understand again, you'll see the three broad categories that I mentioned just a moment ago: direct school expenses, school services budget, essentially in the central administration.

C

You can see last year's adopted budget sorry, our current year, fy17 adopted budget, the FY 17 current and our proposal for FY 18 I'll highlight a couple of the details on this page first and as dr. Chang mentioned nearly four percent, a three point: seven percent increase in direct school expenses. This is driven in part by our funding of extended learning time ELP, as well as investments in students experiencing homelessness vocational, and this number will go up when a collective bargaining agreement is reached.

C

School services budget essentially are also going up at a slightly more moderate pace overall at 2.5%. This is driven most significantly by increasing costs and transportation. Our transportation budget. We expect to go up, despite the continued success of our cost-saving measures, we're experiencing a lot of pressure on the transportation budget from things like drivers, wages, health care costs, the mckinney-vento legislation and an increase in students who have door-to-door service.

C

The last grab category is central administration. That's the only category where we are proposing a reduction in expenses and overall we expect those to go down about 5.5 percent.

C

We are obviously operating in uncertain times when it comes to federal funding. The implementation of every student succeeds. Act remains uncertain. We are doing our best to partner both with our colleagues at the city and state as we navigate these entities uncertain times.

C

Early signals from the state also indicate status quo for Boston state education funding, which is not good news for Boston and, as has been the case for many years now, the city of Boston continues to fill the gap.

C

You've heard me talk about this again, but I just need to drive home the point again of why education funding in the state of Massachusetts does not work for the City of Boston. On page six, you can see both the Charter School reimbursement in chapter 70, education, aid, practically flat, well, city of Boston, bps spending and city of Boston. Overall education spending grow at significant pace.

C

Despite these challenges at the state and federal level, we are very pleased to be proposing a series of what we hope are going to be very impactful investments for next school year. They total approximately twenty million dollars. Dr. Chang touched on a number of them and I'll go into some more in more detail. Elp is over 14 million dollars, we've extended vocational programming, primarily at the English and Kennedy Health Careers.

C

We are supporting our level three four and five schools, particularly those with declining enrollment, we're investing to support students experiencing homelessness, expanding excellence for all our program. For fourth and now fifth grade students, we're adding more k1, Z's and other 100 students.

C

We expect to be in bps and k1 next year versus this year, we're funding the school committee's water policy to ensure clean drinking water in every school, adding substitute custodians to increase the cleanliness of our schools and ensure stability of the staff who are serving schools supporting the Matapan early elementary school, investing in partnership with the mayor's team on universal pre-k and opening new dual language classrooms.

C

I'm going to catch on the highlights of some of our largest investments, now extended learning, time or ELP in the next school year. We expect 57 schools over 23,000 students and more than 1,700 teachers to be participating in this program.

C

You can see here on page 9, a summary of the research. Why do extended learning time in a review of 27 different academic studies? 20 found a positive relationship between a longer school day and academic outcomes.

C

In the graph on page 10, you can see some data about the school day, lengths here in bps, in Massachusetts and across the country compared to a typical u.s. student. A bps student is receiving 126 fewer hours of school per year, equivalent to almost a month of school. Implementation of ELP will bring bps elementary schools in line with state and national benchmarks.

C

Excellence for all has been a program that we've been piloting in 13 schools across bps, adding rigor and enrichment to the fourth grade experience we're excited to propose for FY 18 the extension of this program for rising fifth graders in the same schools. You can see the data here on slide 18 using of bps grade 4. Overall, our students participating in AWC and our four students participating in excellence for all our students who participate in AWC. Look like our are reflecting sorry.

C

Our students was saying excellence for all, reflecting the diversity of our bps student body, which was the objective of this initiative. The schools are doing some really exciting things. With this program we have 11 schools offering robotics 6 schools offering Spanish 3 schools, I sorry, 9 schools offering Spanish 1 school, offering Mandarin and also have been offered the opportunity to participate in stem based field trips to Northeastern Center for STEM education.

C

Also, investing 1.2 million dollars to support students experiencing homelessness. These dollars have been allocated to schools, reflecting our belief that the principles and headmasters for closest to those students should lead the decision-making for how best to support them. Our BPS office central office is closely partnering with those school years offering a suite of resources to help them have many different options for how to support and engage with their students.

C

The school committee has an opportunity and achievement gap task force last year. That task force proposed a policy which the school committee approved, which asked for an equity analysis of every vote that was put in front of the school committee. We welcomed the opportunity and this year, for the first time we conducted a very exhaustive look at the equity of the bps budget.

C

There's a summary of that here, I'm going to spend a moment going into detail and I'm happy to answer more questions about this offline as there's some fairly extensive analysis behind this, we asked ourselves five different questions to think through the issue of equity in bps. First, what percent of the budget is distributed through weighted student funding? We believe that WSF is the most equitable and transparent way to allocate dollars to schools, and we want this number to be high. All in the number is almost two-thirds of our entire budget. This reflects this is high.

C

When we compare ourselves to national benchmarks, we also looked at how schools are being impacted by enrollment shifts.

C

Almost 80 percent of our students are attending schools with stable or increasing budgets, and we put aside a reserve specifically targeted at supporting those schools who are low level, three, four and five or experiencing declining enrollment.

C

Third, we looked at what percent of the budget is allocated to high needs students, particularly in special education in LL spending within the special education in our proposed budget, is 22 percent of the total that number in other districts ranges from 7 to 20. Our national benchmark suggests we are very much investing in our most vulnerable students, English language learning in G, our ELL students. Interestingly, it's a little harder to benchmark because we have such a high rate of students who are learning English VP. So we looked at it in a different lens.

C

We looked at how much we're spending on a per pupil basis. Dps is spending about 26%, more per ALL student than a non IL student and that compares to a national benchmark of 16. So again, the data that we are able to get nationally suggests we are really investing in our highest needs students.

C

Fourth, we looked at how else we differentiate funding for need our WSF weights for poverty and at-risk represent 23 million dollars in the proposed FY 18 budget external funds such as title 1, add another twenty 1 million dollars for Chinese students, and this remains a very high priority for our team, as we think about our long-term financial planning and a multi-year lens.

C

We would like to see these numbers go even further up and then, lastly, we conducted a comprehensive review of every dollar, that's going towards a new investment, and we looked at the schools receiving new dollars from new investment we broke down by who are the students being served at those schools and across the board? Our investments are going towards our historically underserved populations or high needs students.

C

The one exception was the mix between cohorts of ELP, and we think that's just a reflection of the fact that our last cohort of ELP actually are the students who are coming on board last in the sequence. So we felt comfortable with that I.

C

Want to close by reminding you where we are with our long term financial planning process, which we launched over a year ago now, we've pulled together an advisory committee with stakeholders from across our community. We released a report in the fall looking at a comprehensive office of where we're spending money today, how it compares to other districts and what are some of our choices as we consider a path for the future for BPF we're not done with this process.

C

We've made a lot of progress, we're at the stage now of developing proposals, as we continue to get feedback from the community. So the report that we released in the fall had a number of very controversial and bold ideas that would have major policy implications for the Boston Public Schools. None of those suggestions, ideas are in any way reflected in the FY 18 budget. Those are ongoing conversations which will require further approval and votes from the School Committee.

C

What is reflected are the operational efficiencies at central office and in transportation, and to remind you, the areas that we continue to study as part of the long-term financial planning include transportation. The district footprint salaries and benefits of our staff, how we serve our highest needs students and how we advocate for external funds in a legislative environment that supports our goals.

C

We proudly put an enormous amount of detail on our website and I want to make sure that those in the audience and anyone who may be watching at home can go online if they want more detail about the Boston Public Schools proposed budget, it's Boston pebble school org, slash budget.

C

Thank you. Thank.

A

You Alan, since you started your presentation: we've been joined by several other councillors: Council President, Michelle, Wu, district, five city, councilor, Tim, McCarthy, district, three city, councilor, Frank, Baker and district 4 city councilor, Andrea Campbell I. Just want to remind my colleagues that this is the first of seven BPS hearings. We will discuss over 25 topics and I'd like to keep to the five minute rule for each councillor, question and the answers going forward.

A

So if you wouldn't mind kind of looking at me once in a while I'll give you the Sun the sign so the we can keep it going around the horn here. So with that, let me start. Last year we changed a little bit of maybe not a little bit to some people, but we changed this special IDI child teacher ratio by one I believe and folks, and then there was an additional I believe: nine million dollar investment. Can you give us an update on? What's going on? You know with that population?

A

Was it involved, sped kids on the autism spectrum, etc? Yeah.

C

I'd be happy to so. Our special education department worked very closely with every school, as we did indeed implement new staffing guidelines, and we also had put a reserve aside to make sure that any schools that were having any bumps in implementation could be supported. And at this point our team remains confident that we are meeting the needs of every student in every school as reflected in what's in their IEP. You, as our team, got together this year and thought about the potential investments for FY 18.

C

We had conversations about how things were going and we feel like. The investments that we've proposed are the ones that are most leveraged to close opportunity, achievement gaps.

A

So the teams that the nine million funded the teams could you give us kind of an overview of how that that was implemented and how how they were just dispersed. I guess two different schools and what what outcomes were we looking for and.

C

Right yeah um I would be. We have dr. Carla Estrada, who oversees that work. Is president I'm going to invite her to join us to talk about some of that? That.

A

It yeah we have a number of Medicaid I know we have special topics, but this was this was a big issue, I believe in last year's budget for many people and.

C

As dr. assad is coming down, I'll make a slight clarification, but I am there? Wasn't a nine million dollar investment in the teams? It was smaller than I. Think nine million might have been the overall going.

B

Back a year ago, yeah, the overall.

D

C

In special education.

E

Hello, I'll are you, and so what we've been able? Oh Carlos shot, um the deputy superintendent of academics and student support services, and special education is one of my departments and have Cindy Nelson here is also the assistant superintendent. Thank you in regards to I think you did a really nice job Eleanor clarifying how we've been supporting students as we took them up as IEP s are designed. We continue to provide the supports based on the IEP, so that is exactly aligned to what we do it.

E

As far as the supports that we invested in for our inclusion support teams, we've been able to hire a great team of CFC, which our committee facilitators and they've done a really great job at supporting schools directly on ensuring that students who are having challenges such as behavior, are able to be in the general education environment as much as possible and that they coach and support teachers and parents who may be struggling with being able to be fully included in the general education environment and in the classroom.

E

So that has been a focus for us this year and we continue to build these teams. Next year, we'll be adding teachers as part of the support network. We actually have interviews happening next week and so we'll be continuing to expand that opportunity, because we saw such great success this year.

A

And up there was also now the dragging my memory, the nine million part of it was for a new software I believe. Where are we with that implementation? So.

E

We currently have a contract we put out for RFP process and we were able to identify the appropriate company that will be working with us. We've already started talked about design processes and the process for transition and training, and that will be starting. The formal design process of starting in May and training will be happening over the summer to begin to transition.

A

Great and and what kind of feedback are you getting in the schools from the parents, especially? Do you feel it's been as effective? More effective again, I know that the adjustment was the one student, but that, if you have tentative correct me, if I'm on ten students in the classroom would require a teacher in a power.

E

A

Paris to Paris so three Dalton, and what was it before just for clarification.

F

Before it was one teacher into Paris for nine students, Ramon and also as a reminder within the classroom, with a be a specialist there as well providing direct services for the ABA needs for students that are individual I to the student, not.

A

F

To the classroom, I'm.

A

Going to shift gears totally thank you for that update Brighton high level for schools. Turnaround schools. Can you give me an update on particularly bright and high? Obviously,.

B

So bright high school was identified as a level four school. We as part of the school's transformation plan turnaround plan. It did require a change in leadership well, actually by I apologize.

D

B

High school did not require a change in leadership, but the principal didn't make this decision to transition for personal reasons. So Rob remedy will be the new principal of Bryan high school. He is leading the effort currently to re staff. The school we I decided to go with a model that allowed the school the most flexibility and it's Reese tapping, so the school can reach tabs anywhere from zero to a hundred percent of its staff. Currently we're in the plan writing process.

B

Once the plan is completed, we will be going through a very public feedback process where I will be asking. The general I will be asking the Brighton community for any feedback before we finalize the plan. That plan does not have to be approved by just Oh committee or the Commissioner, but both bodies will be giving me feedback. Ultimately, this plan is owned by me as a superintendent.

B

We are one really excited about a Brian. We are going to be creating two pathways at the school starting with next year's ninth graders, and what these pathways will do is combine academics along with career technical education. So we want to make sure the learning that's happening with students in ninth grade and it will continue when they go from 9 through 12 will be approached called link. Learning, that is, students will be learning both inside and outside of school. They will begin work base experiences and the curriculum that they're learning in school will apply.

B

Not only what there will not only be about the academic coursework of English science, maths, history, but it will actually bring those connect. Those themes from the workplace to the academics as well, the two pathways that will be created that school will be one around digital design and communications, and we plan on working very closely with WGBH on that and another one around entrepreneurship, and so very excited about doing this or next phase of high school redesigning and really focusing our support and our two level. Four high schools well.

A

Let me just say that I appreciate that approach very much and I've been in communication with Jonathan Landman, I guess he's your deputies and regular communication with me in my office and I really appreciate that I want to offer my you know any resources that I can help provide to to help this situation that we.

B

A

Appreciate it great, thank you. Thank You counselors ah be good Thank.

G

You, chairman and I did go back to my notes from last year and my five minutes I took 19 minutes. Yes,.

A

And I add up I learned I learned my life. Thank.

G

You all for being here and thank you, superintendent and Ellen, R and mate for being with us I do want to first start by saying thank you regarding the bps homeless students experiencing homelessness. Last year, when I asked you about the 4,000 students experiencing homelessness, there was certainly an agreement around the table that we needed to do more, and I had mentioned that in the entire budget there was only two lines and one mention about this: incredibly vulnerable population and today.

G

In contrast, we have an investment of 1.2 million dollars and a school-based support specifically for those students experiencing homelessness and I'm, very proud of our work and partnership in this area and look forward to watching bps make some substantial and substantive changes for these kids and their families in their school environment as a whole and I look forward further along in this process to talk about that. More I do want to talk, switch gears to talk about transportation, both as it pertains to students are experiencing homelessness and the regular student population.

G

First, with the kids that are experiencing students they're experiencing homelessness, one of the things that came up quite a bit over last year in our process was the school and we could talk about it more detail when we have that particular hearing, but really reducing the time it takes for a student who is in shelter when they move to get transportation reassigned and that kid back in school, because one of the things that we heard last year was it took about 7 to 10 days.

G

For that kid to get back into school and making that down to zero is something that was really important to me, but for transportation as a whole. Last year we had a pretty thorough conversation, robust and active conversation around the ten million dollars in savings that we were hoping to realize in the transportation budget and I. Think most of us were under the impression that that was going to happen for fiscal year.

G

17 now we're hearing as part of our presentation yesterday that it's 5 million over two years- five million each year this year and last year in this year, but then there's an increase by seven and a half percent in our transportation spending. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because a less of an increase is not savings. It's still an increase and that's the way it was explained to us yesterday by Turner chief Sweeney yeah.

C

When we sat down to work on the transportation budget, we asked ourselves how much is it going to cost to do the same thing next year that we're doing this year? We did that last year, we're doing it again this year and the cost pressures have been very significant in transportation. I mentioned a couple of them: drivers, wages, health care, vehicle insurance, implementing mckinney-vento, our increase in the number of students or a door-to-door we're having some increase in cost to serve some of out of district placement students.

C

There's been a lot of pressures on the transformation budget that are driving costs up. So last year we set a very aggressive 10 million dollar target for savings. It was the 10 million dollar savings last year was versus.

C

If we didn't change anything, so it was versus what we call a maintenance budget. So we didn't take the FY 17, sorry FY 16 budget and simply reduce it by 10 million. We looked at a projected FY 17 budget and then reduced that by 10 million dollars, and our hope was to accomplish this.

G

Fiscal year 17, you look to reduce it by 10, not that we.

C

Our target was 10 for the current school year and it was a very aggressive target and we're not going to think we all talked.

G

About yes, you loaded there.

C

Yeah we did, and we are not going to hit it for this year, but I'm, proud to say, I think we're going to hit it over the course of two years.

C

We had a number of strategies this year that we implemented a number of them paid off and we're taking lessons from what worked and didn't work this year, and we have another slew of strategies that we're working on right now to implement over the course of summer, so that at the start of next school year we have even fewer yellow buses on the road you know. I.

C

Would we have liked to have achieved 10 million in one year, of course, but I'm actually quite proud that we're going to achieve it, even if it takes taking taking us two years rather than one I, would.

G

Just my initial response to that is, when we're planning we shouldn't be planning to continue to do the same thing. We should be planning to try things differently. Yes, so I would say that that's the only way to remove some of those pressures is to start to do things differently and I. Think that's, certainly a frustration that I've shared with all of you over the course of the year out.

D

G

Is we need to do? We need to do things differently? I would like to just hear this will be my last question for now is what steps are we taken or have we taken or planning to take on removing some of those pressures on transportation, in particular, I'm thinking about the out of district placement? I'm? Thinking about that yesterday we heard 876 kids that are going to charter schools.

G

You know which is all which all put put spatter on the budget as a whole, but then also on the transportation budget, in particular yeah.

C

I'd be happy to talk to some of the strategies we're implementing in transportation right now for the coming school year. Some of them are out of our control, so the charter transportation, it's part of state law, we've actually been working. I want to recognize the partnership with some of the leaders from the Charter sector, sitting down, brainstorming with them about how we can reduce costs there, but there are limits to how creative we can be because of the state law and citywide enrollment for our charter school.

C

So as the enrollment in charter schools goes up, it does it's another one of the factors, that's a upward pressure on our transportation budget. So some of the things that we are doing the top priority is reducing the number of routed students who never ride the bus. We've talked about this extensively, you're going to be seeing flyers coming home and backpacks a big outreach effort. First parents tell us if they don't need for us service we're going to be going really aggressively.

B

C

Year, we're also, you may have heard about our translation, hackathon, routing and transportation. Logistics are a classic computer science challenge, it is big data and we are bringing in smart minds from universities and business and anyone who's interested to try to crack the code on how to reduce the number of stops and route more efficiently.

C

We are also working with the community on equitably balancing bail times when I'm going to like.

G

Skyy, acting like a teacher, are again in here because there's lots of side conversation, so it's really hard to focus on your response. Sorry, thank you.

G

A

Minutes the price I'm.

G

Asking another question: I've got a bank in Buffalo.

A

Jackson sorry.

C

um We're surveying.

G

Are you worse, yeah we're.

C

On the balancing belt I'm thinking, we have too many dull times at 7:30 and 8:30, which drives up our cost. We.

G

Rally on say just for the record, we have too many bail times at 9:30, yes, which we can.

C

G

Have to in round 2.

C

We are conducting a survey of parents to better understand how they experienced their yellow bus service. What we can do better and differently I could keep going. We have a whole generation.

G

Here yet I'd also like those so that's transportation, specific yeah, but also how are we and this will be a rhetorical question? Okay, we have to move these our students that are leaving the district for outside placements, for numerous reasons, not necessarily charter schools. How are we reducing that number and providing perhaps those supports and services in the cities? We retain those kids in our Boston Public School, it's a rhetorical question. You set the gamble. Thank you very much. Councillor.

H

Jack, please don't gavel me like my vice chair. I, want to actually first off I do want to acknowledge councillor and ISA sabe George for hitting the ground running, in particular, around homelessness and I'm very happy around the work that has been done there to help the over 4,000 young people that we know of who are are homeless and I hope. The my hope is that we further coordinate with the Department of Neighborhood Development Boston planning a development agency to get actually homes for these young people who are attached to families that are homeless.

H

The first question I have, though, is I will let you know I think it's it's inaccurate, at best to say forty million dollars to this body as the increase that I don't think it's fair to my colleagues or the people who are listening on to note that this is a forty. It is not a forty million dollar increase in the budget that we are actually going to be able to control. So I would ask that you, let us know the operating aspect of the budget, and if you can this aggregate the you use.

H

The word maintenance budget, so you have a top-line twenty nine million dollar increase. Can you back out the new programs that are involved in that twenty? Twenty nine million dollar increase and give this counsel understanding of what the actual maintenance budget is for the Boston School Department.

C

So I'll say a few things: first, on the collective bargaining reserve. This is a new way of talking about our budget this year. I understand your concerns, but I think that it is very important for us to think about holistically all the money we're going to be spending next year and but.

H

That money is not spent. The collective bargaining reserve has to come back to this body and be taken out of reserve those dollars and it by the way. If you don't, if you don't, you actually don't close a contract, they won't get spent in in this in this F in that fiscal year. So I just think it's it.

H

It top-line is misleading, because forty forty million dollars would mean a 4% increase across the board, so twenty nine million dollars is the actual increase and I believe and and what I'd like to know out of that twenty million dollar at twenty nine million dollars. What is the the actual maintenance budget increase, because that gives our body and understanding year over a year? Knowing that inflation is three point, two two percent since 1928, whether or not we're actually able to pay for the same thing that we've we had last year.

C

So a lot of the inflation expenses would be reflected in the collective bargaining of course. So so we did, we did not calculate a maintenance budget for the bps budget. Overall, this year we tried to take a new approach to the way we were doing budgeting. We did it in for transportation, but not overall. So.

H

Can we do so again? This is uh or this is education- we're talking about so twenty nine million dollars right yeah. So how much is the extended learning time? Fourteen.

C

H

That's fourteen so down to fifteen right. How much is the the are the new seats for our early education if.

C

You're, the total number of new investments total to twenty million. It's on page, seven, so and they're all listed there down to the dollar. The k1 is six hundred about okay.

I

C

K1 pieces 508 and the you PK investment is one hundreds. They told it to six hundred so.

H

It's about twenty.

C

Million in new investments, okay,.

H

So about twenty million in new investments, so that means is: does that mean that they're, not the nine million dollar I'd like this actual number yeah? But if you can tell me what the actual maintenance number is, because if that actual maintenance number, so twenty nine million minus twenty yeah, it is nine million dollars. So that would leave nine million dollars as the actual maintenance budget am I, correct, I.

C

Don't I didn't mean to interrupt you counselor, but we have also some cost savings that we are reflecting in the budget. So a.

H

Good particularly.

C

At the central office, so our costs going up would be more than the nine million we have healthcare costs going up by over six million that transportation. This is a too big one, so.

H

So the reason why I bring that up, which nine million dollars would mean less than a one percent increase to the total budget in maintenance, and that is important for us to know and the reason and the reason why and you're saying that there is a shift in the way that you calculate this. That is problematic for those of us who've been here over the course of of time, because you're we're not comparing apples to apples.

H

So what I would ask is that if we could have an apples to apples comparison year over a year for maintenance budget backing out Reserve mm-hmm, because that allows us to use the the prior thinking and a way in which we are able to look at a budget from from year to year. There's this budget, we store autistic funding. We.

C

Have maintained our staffing guidelines from the current school year? What.

H

Was the okay, so it does not restore autistic funding from the prior year from the prior fiscal year, which is the change that councilor CMO brought up relative to the number of students in in a classroom. So there's no restoration of that funding. We.

C

Are proposing the same staffing for next year, as we have this year? Okay,.

H

What is the difference between last year's and and this year's staffing.

C

Financially or in terms of people, sorry, it was about a five million dollar change in weighted student funding. Okay,.

H

And what did that mean in the classroom? Study I, think.

C

It was on average adding one additional student to the classroom. There's.

H

A one or two I think.

C

It was mostly one, but there was one type of classroom that had two students is that right, I'm? Looking at my colleagues, okay.

H

Because I've heard from eight to ten and the reason why, when we speak about equity and the achievement gap, hmm understanding where we are relative to our autistic students and young people or on the spectrum is I think one of the areas that was actually at the epicenter lets.

H

You and I think it's really important that if we're looking at things to an equity and opportunity lens that you're saying that there was a cut to some of the most vulnerable young people in the Boston Public Schools and that cut was not restored in this in this year, I'm going to and I would just and I know the I'm getting the side-eye right now. In addition, I also believe when we look at the calculation and I just mean my last question for this round.

H

Why is it in the school budget, unlike any other major department budget? Why are benefits calculated in the school budget?.

C

That's a good question for me: I think.

J

The answer has to do with how we calculate our charter reimbursement, so putting it on the school budgets helps to fully incorporate the amount I think. The other thing is that traditionally, BDS has had more control over our FTEs than other city departments, in the way that the state law is written and so part of the way to control sort of our internal cost is to make sure we pay the full cost of all employees in a way that other city departments have don't have the same autonomy of recipes. But.

H

And I would just say that I think is unfair to bps, because when we're adding funding to other departments or actually adding funding funding directly to that department, without with with their benefits being actually centrally budgeted and I, think that kind of detracts from VPS relative to the actual addition of funding and really is not an apples to apples. Comparison relative to other major major department, so I will take the next round of questions. Laughter thanks, council.

K

Flower, tea game and I know this is just an overview, so I'm just going to let folks know my themes. Obviously, throughout the budget, will be very consistent with the years past will be I'll. Take a look at wasteful spending. Take a look at the teacher. Certifications, take a look at that transportation, contract with respect to fleet maintenance and repair, as well as school assignments, so so keeping an eye towards that and I know that the schedule is very specific as to when we'll be dealing with those issues.

K

So just want to put that on the forefront and then just a couple, quick questions. We raised this yesterday what the CFO around current Home Rule petitions that are pending and the one that the pastor the council recently was the BCC surcharge surplus pool funds and as of this past February, we told that 600,000 of those were invested to set up the universal pre-k for VPS and to then we'll have an added four hundred.

D

K

4422 seats will be added and so that we also anticipate an additional hundred more k1 students. So my question, I guess, is if, if for some reason, the Home Rule petition does not gain approval up at Beacon Hill, what's the what's the back-up plan, they raise it as just as a flag, because it's a never want to count the chickens before they hatch and we started in the budget overview. We start in the mayor's briefing. We know that it hasn't passed yet it passed here quickly.

K

You notice, we the mayor, sign it, but sometimes it gets up there and strange things can happen and so I just don't know what the fallback is. We have. We've promised you know the k1 season in the universal k1 and if we lose that homo petition momentum, what's our what's our plan, B I guess.

C

Yeah at this point, as far as I'm aware, we don't have a plan B. The issue is for not the coming school year. That starts in September I. Think that's the year after that we have fully funded and are able to serve the 100 additional k1 students we're expecting in September, regardless of that BCC work. We.

K

Know that the folks over at BCC I, think they're in discussions about talking about a possible expansion when they would need some of those funds. And when.

B

K

Like that, a homeroom petition goes up to Beacon Hill, you know every Tom, Dick and Harry state rep is going to want something for their community and for the district and for their school. So I just caution, I, guess morally, both fledged spending that doe until we get the okay. We also, we sent a lot of Home Rule petitions up there, probably a large larger amount than normal, so law of averages, but we're not going probably bad.

K

A thousand I just want to make sure that if this is the one that gets knocked off the block, then how are we gonna I'm going to back-end it so yeah.

F

K

Then, just the last question is I know we budgeted 1.3 for a vocational education opportunity in English hi in and at the Kennedy health career. What were the factors into determining and categorizing those schools as vocational? What resources are we giving those schools, and is there any sort of public-private partnership that would try to connect with those schools to again, it's I look at yet it's not just it's not good enough anymore, that we're graduating kids we're in a global economy.

K

We boast of having the best college universities in the world if our kids aren't getting into those great schools, that's a disappointment. If our kids unable to be able to compete globally, that's going to be a disappointment so wanting to tap into these public-private partnerships, whether it's GE or others. We know of GE, but could we put some pressure on some of other Boston companies to step up to the plate and to partner with us so that it's not just about getting the student into high school, getting the student out of high schools?

K

What lies ahead for these kids, and particularly in a global economy I'd like to see I, don't get some innovative stuff happening. Counselor, sorry George! You just mentioned something that's going on, which is all good positive stuff. We obviously need to continue on that trend. She likes doing things. Sort of new and different, based on her experience in the classroom and being able to embrace that and focus on preparing the next wave for the global economy would be would be something I'd like to see in this 1 billion dollar school budget. Yes,.

B

Absolutely I think it's it's not only about the message that we're making it's about the investments that we're encouraging others to make our companies to meet partners. Is it I'm a big believer that career technical education and academics have to go side by side and is about not only the rigor of the high school education is also about the relevance of high school education, so I want to suffer everything. You just said. The reason why English High, School and emk were the two chosen for this year for this investment.

B

They went through a pretty extensive process, with the state to be certified as career vocational technical education programs very excited about the Protective Services pathway at English ice. Well, there's going to be a focus on cybersecurity, as well as the kind of traditional protective services as well and then emk, of course, Derick on medical services, and they have had a history of working with a lot of hospitals in that area and where I continue. Building on that and so very proud to work at umk has been doing.

K

We're good Thank You mr. chairman thank.

D

K

A

L

You altered I'm, sorry, I'm, sorry.

A

Alto malli I'm, sorry.

I

Ab, how happily defer to after after Michelle, oh yeah I only.

L

Had one question and for everyone given, this is the overview I just wanted to know how the all the long-term stuff had fit in so I, don't really see it necessarily outlined in here. I know.

L

Starting from last time, we were talking about schools, giving a little more sort of runway and seeing down the pike, what the changes would be either to waited to do funding, or especially with grants coming and going and I mean we all in this room really understand the how tight the budgets are with costs going up, and it seems every year central office is sort of squeezed more more and more to try to make room for schools. But when will the long term picture start to manifest itself in more than just a?

L

This is what's happening this year, so they can plan ahead. One three five years.

B

Over the last 18 months, we've been doing a lot of planning documents included in. We had three major planning documents, one on a strategic implementation plan that puts of all our initiatives out there. These are all the things we're working on next, three or five years. The monitor financial planning document that you spoke about and then most recently billed bps that puts forth the conditions of our buildings.

D

B

Are where our schools are relative to other hubs of learning in our city? How close they are to our transportation hubs basically puts all the information we need to begin doing, some of the kind of hard lift of reconfiguring schools making sure building schools where families are going to be growing in, and so we're very optimistic as we move into next year that some of these major critical policy shifts, I, guess I'll, say, will begin you'll be will be able to see the fruits of our labor and our planning, and so.

B

With the width and a reconfiguring where schools will also do a better job with our transportation, a lot of those are also interlocked, we're also in the middle of negotiations with our collective bargaining partners and the Boston Teachers Union is the biggest body and where we're still working very vigorously, to make sure that we get a contract that is both responsible respectful to our teachers responsible to our our city, and so all those are all working, Inc interlocked to be able to unlock the resources. We need to invest more into schools, so.

L

Does that mean that, for example, once the contract is settled and there's a little more certainty about the salary and benefit related costs for the next few years, then you know next year we can start to see multi-year actual multi-year budgeting and.

C

We're working on the multi-year budgeting right now, one of the things that came out loud and clear for the long term work is how much schools are creating that multi-year stability, so they can plan their own instructional programs and their supports for kids. So we hope that this year actually is the start of that process.

C

I think our school leaders have appreciated those we're doing all sorts of stuff that you don't see in the budget to partner with them, so they can have that stability for their planning and we're getting some positive feedback from them and we're hoping that there's more we're ready to say publicly about what a multi-year picture will look like we're, just not quite there. Yet.

C

The big rocks that we need to tackle are complex policy questions that touch so many members of our community and there's just been hard to go as fast as on those items as I understand folks might want. Okay.

L

Thank you look forward to digging in over the next couple weeks. Thank you, mm-hmm councillor.

A

Malley Thank.

I

You mr. chair in good afternoon, good morning, superintendent and team just wanted to begin by acknowledging the good work of our former colleague Rob can solve was recently joined. Bps were really grateful that he is continuing to serve the people and the neighbors that he knows so well. I, two brief statements that I want to get into some specific questions on the budget. The first is about ELT extended learning time ELT, as a concept is brilliant. It makes sense it's giving our kids more classroom time. It's obviously they're oftentimes used for good enrichment.

I

We've seen how it has worked well in practice. There can be some unintended consequences that make it less desirable and certainly less effective than we would like, and not the least of which is the fact that we've got many of our elementary schools that started a later start time, 9:00, 9:30 a.m.

I

which means the extra hour of time can often lead to kids. You know being prohibited from doing after-school sports or other active school after-school activities. The counselor sabe, George and I had met with some parents at a school in my district concerned about other unintended consequences. So I would again like to reiterate the call that councillor, sabe, George and I have been making for quite some time. As we talk about high school start times now, you may argue that most of our kids are many probably most of our kids.

I

High school students do not receive transportation, so that's not necessarily related to the later start time for schools, but many high schools. In fact, all high schools have at least some buses because of different services that those kids need.

I

So again, I would argue today it's the way we can address a better and more impactful and effective, extended learning time in our elementary schools is to begin the process of pushing and earlier I really choose an earlier start time for those schools in a later start time for the high schools, there is conclusive evidence after evidence, after evidence and last month's Boston magazine a doctor who testified at our hair encounter, sabe George wrote this piece essentially on that it was an interview on sleeping habits and half the article was about the irrefutable evidence that later start time and more sleep for high school students makes more sense, so I think that's what we need to do.

I

We've had conversations superintendent. We will continue to have conversations, but I just want to make it crystal clear that my concern with ELT isn't in concept in concept. That makes sense in practice we're not doing it the right way and we have a real opportunity to do so. That's one statement. My second statement is on the facilities plan. I brought this up at every budget. Hearing since I've been elected to this seat in March of 2011, I called for my first hearing order on bust and facilities.

I

None of you were working for bps at the time. In fact, looking around this chamber comes her CEO Moe was the only other counselor who was serving at that time. Everyone else has come since we've been told that it's coming, we've been told that there's been a opportunity for robust public dialogue, but the can keeps getting kicked down the road and it's a it's a missed opportunity. We know there's going to be some tough conversations, but we cannot continue to wait on this and keep punting this ball. We have to have these conversations.

I

We have to work with our stakeholders. We have to work with our school communities and have these tough conversations and it's weave beyond waited long enough for this I ran into a fellow over the weekend, who runs a makers lab and wanted to donate. Some of his in exchange for use of some space want to donate some of his material. These 3d cutters, these laser cutters, 3d printers other workstations, called a number of schools.

I

In my district we couldn't find because there was no room and it just sort of reiterated, my desire to have a real facilities plan, because I think we're also missing out on these public-private partnerships. We've been talking about that said: I want to just go through some of the line items that are seeing some decreases so I'm on page 202 of the budget book. It's also in your handout.

I

If you could just give me the sort of explain if you look at line item 52, two zero zero utilities cut of about 1.3 million dollars is that primarily fuel tightening barrel of oil is cheaper. Is that why yeah.

J

We worked with the city's Budget Office to do our projections for utility usage or expecting both the cost and the usage of of our heating fuel to go down for the next year. I'm.

I

Like that, because of affirmative changes are just sort of the market dictates, gas is cheaper than it was four years ago. I.

J

Think it's a little bit of both I mean it's mostly the cost of oil and the we've had a number of years where we have actually come in under budget in that category.

I

J

So we're adjusting to reflect actual tonight.

I

Reshape at night and again to reiterate the desire for the facilities plan, as was proven yesterday with Dave Sweeney's overview, the city has saved six million dollars on energy efficient street light. This is another opportunity that bps could be building greener and better energy, efficient schools. There's a four point: six million dollar decrease on contracted services, also under contractual services. Fifty two nine zero zero and just tell me what that is yeah.

J

Our contracted services budget includes a number of different categories. I just want to give you a sense of where they are the the largest category. In that, where we see a decrease is in our, we consider purchase services. Those are spread across schools and departments for use in any any time we're working with an outside agency or partner of the reductions that we see in contracted services. 1.8 million is at the school level, despite the fact that budgets for schools is increasing by 1.8 million.

J

We do see a shift away from contracted services and non personnel in general for schools. There's a lot of reasons why that may be happening. Part of it could be the recognition of school-based interventions for ESL or for other FTEs. We see schools adding FTE, so the conversion of contracted services into positions at the school level. So.

I

These would be for a specialist brought on to help a student. These contracted service.

J

Contracted services could be used for any number of things. It could be for things like Playworks, which is a partner that comes in runs or structured recess.

I

Yeah yeah very successful I love play works has worked great at the Manning school. You might complain sure.

J

I

Of being eliminate or phased out, I think.

J

School bases that there was not an elimination or phase-out of play work, so I was just using as an example here.

I

On how they write yeah yeah.

J

Use contracted services, I, think school based decisions are rolling up to see when we see it at aggregate level we see schools are shifting from non personnel to personnel, but with 125 schools and a 1.8 million dollar decrease. That really just means one in four school is making the decision to add an interventionist instead of their planned purchase of a contracted service would.

I

Like Reading Recovery come under that sort of contractual service as well, it.

J

That's how they would they could pay for extra. So.

I

Its 4.6 million overall 1.8 it at the school level. So that's 2.8, yeah.

J

1.4 we see reductions in contracts in the finance office and the finance office tends to be a holding place for expenditures that are planned in other places. As much as I would love a large contract to be able to spend um so.

I

You guys are saving 1.4 million.

J

Well, it was a holding place.

I

J

We do our part 1.4 million was converted. Part of it was to go. A large portion of it was to pay for what's called special education autonomy funding at the at our up schools. They have the ability to receive the per pupil allocation for things like sped itinerant service providers. At this time last year we had not finalized the amount that they would receive for special education autonomy funding, so it was held in a finance contract line and was allocated the later point in the year this year.

J

We've done the work to with them to allocate the money to them. So that's a large portion of the decrease in the finance contracts office there's also a 300k reduction in innovation. The superintendent is cut 330k and purchase services from his departments. You see a lot of departments as we start to look at priorities for the next year, places where we have either over under budgeted in the past and.

I

I just want to be cleared so I have it right until people paying attention right. When you talk about you know, 330k cut and purchase services. That could be something like catering for staff meetings or something.

J

It could be catering for staff meetings because that's paid out of a different account, but other.

I

I'm, not this isn't trying to.

D

I

Trying to reconcile this is the biggest decrease we've seen in our budget. You know you all have said that about pointing to anywhere from a 20 million dollar or nine million, depending on which figures you know you sort of incorporate in terms of an increase. I just want to make it clear that these decreases aren't affecting our sir I want to know that these decreases aren't affecting our students. We.

C

Have taken a number of steps to run very tight at the central office president was acknowledging the fact that we've done this for a number of years, so it's not without any consequences, but you will see reference in our documents. The fact that we have done across-the-board cuts to stipends food travel. We've done selective change, adjustments to staffing personnel changes. We are going to be running tight centrally and I. Don't want to pretend that that has no consequences. We it constrains our ability to solve mid-year problems in particular that come up at the school level.

C

But again we feel like it was the right thing to do for this budget, because it's enabling us to send more school money to schools and to enable that list of 20 million dollars of investments which we're so passionate about. Okay,.

I

Thank you, then. A final question for this round is line item: five: five: nine: zero: zero miscellaneous equipment under equipment; a cut of 1.5 million dollars; it's essentially the entire cut of the equipment line of what is that is that those vehicles are smart.

J

I'm just pulling up a detail as.

D

J

Five: five nine appropriation level equipment is tends to be computer equipment. Computer desktops and photocopy equipment are the largest categories. The biggest decrease in this is a 1.3 million dollar decrease in the computer equipment line. We just completed the rollout of a Chromebook purchase. That's not planned to continue next year, so we just purchased Chromebooks cost sharing with schools. So the one point three million dollar reduction is in our office of instructional technology as part of their rollout of student Chromebooks and schools, and.

I

That is because you wouldn't need new Chromebooks. Every year, Chromebook lasts three four five, that's right, probably free this.

J

Was the sort of planned end of the Chromebook rollout.

I

J

This year, all.

I

Right, thank you. Thank you. Mr. chairman council.

A

More coffee thank.

M

You very much mr. chair good afternoon. Everybody we'll probably be seeing you more than we do our families until July, so that'll be nice. A couple things out, I'll just keep to what Mark said. Originally try to stay at three 30,000 feet. We simply I'll talk about district 5 in particular. We simply just don't. We don't have enough seats and we have seats that are empty. So I'll give you a perfect example: Roosevelt school we have inclusion seats that are empty, yet we have people waiting to get into the Roosevelt.

M

So we can't just create inclusion. Kids we're just going to leave the seats empty really makes no sense. The biggest phone calls we're getting in my office is a constant I've applied for four schools. I got none of them, I'm getting shipped from Rossdale from Mattapan or hi Park I'm, going to Dorchester I'm, going to Southie I'm going somewhere else. This is my third for city budget.

M

With VPS and every year we talk about people putting for sale signs up going to know it going to Walpole going to wherever, because they don't want to deal with this every year and when I first started knocking doors. The first time I ever ran everybody who had said the same thing to me. Please, the love of God just get me from K to six and I'll figure. It out my kids smart enough to get into an exam school he'll go, but she'll go if they want.

M

If we want to send it to a Catholic, school or private school, we'll do it. But can you just get me to sixth grade and every year I still say the same thing to the people who call on the phone and your staff is awesome: Carol, McNeil and Robbie, now, they've been so responsible and so respectful of our request, but they're just that the requests I mean I might as well roll them up and throw them into the recycle bin, because you can't do anything with them.

M

So I want to get further into that at a later date, so be prepared for the answer that one to the ELT a lot of the schools aren't big fans. Is there an opt-out for ELT, or is everybody doing this? It's.

C

A contractual agreement with BTU, so everyone is doing it in the 59 schools or part of the original agreement. Okay,.

M

All right, so that's so no opt-out, gotcha plan for grade levels 7 through 12 K through 6 K through 8. Where are we with that yep so account.

B

And I know I know.

M

This wasn't your creation, but we got it. We have to fix it.

B

We I think I want to say a couple things around great configurations. We have 24 great configurations. We need fewer, yes, we're hearing the same things. We need more seats in some neighborhoods, there is a demand and all that is part of the master planning process. The k67 12 great configuration is one transition and many of our parents transition 2, 3 4 times from K to 12. So we want to create a more coherent school system.

B

We will we started that process of planning for this, and our goal is over next 3-5 years to get more coherence into the school system. That will happen. Okay, thanks.

M

Look at me, this really is all right.

D

M

Shooting I've got online transportation. You guys know that, like that, really the thorn in my side last year we talked about a study regarding saving 10 million dollars. Is there an actual document with that? Where are we with that? With the professionals that we hired? Do we hire anybody? This is an internal study that we did yeah.

C

M

C

I have a lot of information on transpiration I'm happy to go into it now.

M

I know no I'll hit jumpers I'll talk about that, because I also want to talk about the land in readville to begin with, like who owns it and the lease, and all that so I, don't know if we own it. The bus company owns that do we know.

D

M

See because my thought is, we talk about transportation here, an awful lot and it seems like the suburbs go out to the suburbs. They enjoy their lives and then during work days they come in here and flood us with cars and everything else I would like to flood them with buses like I, think we should move these yards and put put them in in Milton and put them in Dedham and put them wherever, because I run for Senator something I'll, never win those towns dog.

M

They just said that, but that's okay, push them out of city and let them come in because R evil. You know, as Robbie knows literally, you can't get any father away from downtown than where I live. You can't so I think we should probably save some money and move some of these bus shots out of the city and have them just drive into the city. Like everybody else does just a thought and then my last question I know: there's some jurisdiction, issues and I'm not really clear about this, but the new mission and BC LA.

M

You know there's a space issue going on and it's getting a little bit nasty, so I think maybe we can have a sidebar and just kind of talk about and see how we're going to put that to put that to bed before it becomes a major issue for everyone. Okay,.

L

M

Chair. Thank you. Thank you also,.

A

N

Thank you, mr. Chia, good morning. Everyone um can. We talk a little bit about the the advance work in the excellence for also his excellence, for all mean that we're going to be phasing out the advance work, absolutely.

B

Not the 13 programs for excellence for all this year, we're fourth grade classrooms solely in 13 schools. Three of those schools had previously had events where class and the school communities made the decision to go to excellence for all I believe those were the curly Edison and the base.

B

The ten other schools never did have a vance work, class and they've brought in excellence for all at 4th grade for this year. As we move into next year, it will be those 13 schools moving from 4th grade to 5th grade we're, adding a grade basically, and that will continue on for 3 years until those 13 schools have rigorous instruction enrichment at 4th through 6th grade for all students.

N

B

Correct to change in the curriculum, the more enrichment, more professional development for teachers.

B

N

Yeah anybody sorry yeah. It.

B

Exactly in those schools in three of those schools, the Edison debates and the Curley, they would have rigorous instruction for all four through sixth graders by the end of the following school year, for the ten schools they never had a vance word class. These were schools that were just general education, okay,.

N

So so that's that's where the excellence for all is going to go into the schools that never had advance work. That's.

B

N

So advanced where it will be standalone and those programs will continue into the future. What.

B

You see with those in our vast majority of our advanced work classes. They reside in schools where fourth, through sixth graders are separated. There.

K

B

Who are in advance work, and there are students who are in general education, for example the Murphy, the Lee school. They have such models. Our hope is, as we are becoming more inclusive in our practices. So we are not separating students from fourth through sixth grade and in these sort of settings. However, this only has this has to be done in partnership with schools, school communities. We need to make sure that there's a capacity in all those schools to be able to serve all students in an inclusive setting.

B

That's why that investment was made in those ten schools.

N

Okay, so in eight years is advance work, a thing of the past I.

B

Do hope that we do get to a point where all four through sixth graders in this city are getting rigorous instruction and getting enrichment. I hope that.

N

Is the goal? But what happens? Because there are kids, there are kids that are at a higher level of learning and then the kids that are at the lower level of learning and they're in the same class. What happened like I'm.

B

A believer like all students have assets.

B

We have to figure out how we help all our students, even those who may be academically struggling those who may be having behavioral issues, how we help them, how we help them intersect with the curriculum and with the learning process, so we're making a big investment right now in Universal, Design learning, universal design of learning is a is a it's a philosophy that you can design a learning experience in classrooms where every student, no matter what their strengths may be, finds a way to enter into the learning process, and so that takes time it takes a lot of training.

B

It takes a lot of curriculum development, but that is our goal. Our goal is to have more inclusive classrooms, so.

N

Universal design of learning is that does that have anything to do with the facilities plan and what our you know, because I listen to the mayor speak a couple times about the investment in the next ten years, a billion dollars in the next ten years, and he talks about in in in and it sounds great and I believe it can work it like. So the design of building we're going to look at classrooms differently. So maybe we're not all standing in rows. Is that something that you're.

B

Absolutely right, counselor many of our classrooms do have kind of the traditional setup where the students are lined up in rows and some students flourish in I environment, other students don't, and so we hope to have more flexible use of furniture. Our initial thirty million dollars worth of capital investments in build VPS will be to furniture and technology that would support more inclusive settings.

N

Okay, um I would are we going to have? Are we going to have a hearing on on the on the facilities plan or not really yeah.

A

Well, this is a hearings around capital, okay,.

N

Okay, totally we can get into that. Then. Can you talk a little bit about the it's 1.3 million going into new vocational? Is that is that just that 1.3 going English any MK for those two programs that you would talk about that.

C

Is correct: we have a weight in our way to student funding that gives an additional dollar for every student who's participating in a vocational program, and so it's based on the additional number of students will be served in those programs and again, as dr. Chang said earlier, both schools are officially part of chapter 74 at the state level, which designates them as vocational programs. Okay,.

N

And what about we talked about bright in high school? How are we gonna? Was that going to be part of a vocational pathway also or there's.

B

A there's currently a vocational program at Bryan, high school, but don't believe it's chapter 74 approved- is that right? It's not right, um but what we do hope is over time, because it is a pretty extensive process that we can career, create pathways to school, that are also approved by the CVT II process that will make them chapter 70. Okay,.

N

It is it we haven't, talked at all internally about maybe a broader vocational discussion, because if anybody is doing work in the city, they know how difficult it is to find to find anybody in it. Like a we. What's the investment in what is the Madison pocketbook like in the next in the next couple of years, or there is your investment there, you know we a week in that electrical program over there I know, people that that teach you and I know they're trying to connect students on with with the same sort of job placement.

N

We are we looking at Madison pop in that lighter, or we also looking at places like South Boston high, like maybe bring, maybe maybe bring two vocational classes over there and what's the thought in the next three, four or five years, so.

B

We are a we. We started this year, a pretty extensive process, ongoing process to evaluate all our vocational programs throughout the system. Whether they are chapters under four programs are non chapter. 74 programs we do have a lot of overlap in our programming. Visual design is a very popular pathway. You have them at about ten different schools, graphic.

N

Design on Judah and.

B

Then, but we're missing pathways such as biotechnology, we don't have a biotechnology pathway, so the.

N

Way it would that go. We.

B

Don't have a place where it blazes up halfway, we think is critical to create in Boston Public Schools would.

N

That be deer born when the dam one is is built out. We.

B

Don't know at this time, but we do have a person that works with dr. McDonald moans. Here deputy superintendent strategy, my name is Michele Suvari. She works closely with kevin mchale. Syllables are two leads on CV te programming in Boston, Public Schools as a system CEOs.

N

Career vocational.

B

Technical education, so the overalls, so we will have a strategy that will bring these protist sort of programming to vast majority of our high schools again, I believe in this intersection between career, technical education and academic. Our high schools of the future need to be able to provide programming for our students. I do both things yeah.

N

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Mr. chair. Thank.

A

Council Campbell.

O

Thank you mr. chair. Thank you guys for all your hard work, great.

E

O

See you again and I look forward to this long process with you over the lovely summer, I.

D

O

Have some big big questions and other questions I'll leave for when we get into actual specific subject? Subject: matters but I share, counsel, McCarthy's concerns about transportation and, frankly, how we going to blow that budget up, because it's just frankly too much when you think about the needs that our schools are constantly calling us about it's just it's not sustainable.

O

And frankly, even though we had that ten million dollars realize five million dollars in savings and then have hopefully to realize that second five million dollars in savings, our transportation budget is still going up, it will probably continue to go up, and so what is the real strategy outside of costs avoidance measures to make sure that we do something drastic to actually reduce it?

O

So I'll save that for the long, the longer discussion when it comes to transportation, also care about that assignment process, specifically open seats at schools with waiting lists, I, obviously represent district 4 I call it the schools of the Tale of Two Cities. Almost we have some really high performing schools.

O

It's really low performing schools, our students attend, and so obviously you have parents who get assigned to schools that they don't want to send their kids to because they just don't have a reputation of excellence who are looking at other schools, even if it's outside their neighborhood that have open seats but waiting lists, and so it's a frustrating conversation to explain why they can't get into those schools and so I share what Council McCarthy was saying and look forward to a conversation around that quick question about the e-elt so right now not every school has extended learning time.

O

So if a school does have it but doesn't want it, they can't opt out of it. That's.

B

O

Even if we have a school that desperately wants it, they can't get it well.

C

The ELT agreement applies to all of our k-8 schools that are not autonomous. You know in our lingo we have a number of different categories of autonomous schools, whether they're Horace Mann, charters or Pilon.

L

C

Etcetera, so it applies to all of our quote. Unquote, traditional schools. Does that answer your question. It.

O

Does in the challenge with that is I have one school in my district that found so the loophole and took advantage of that loophole to actually get ELT, while actually pursuing autonomy and I said good for them, because, frankly, they win for both sides. They win from having some of that autonomy that they wanted, that their teachers wanted, and they also went from getting ELT but I, know they're, that's an interesting story and it's great to see them get it. But it's at some point. There is tremendous value in ELT.

O

We don't need another study or data set to tell us that kids that have ELT and early education and care and quality early and care, and so many other things do well as just a base baseline. So I was just curious about that ELT option and knowing that their schools who want it but can't necessarily get it and how that would work. We.

C

Did a review and dr. Monty, please correct me if I've got these numbers wrong, but I think all, but one or two of our autonomous schools also have an extended day. So with the implementation, we will have almost near complete coverage of every case. Well, okay,.

O

And if we wanted to obviously revisit this to open it up for more schools, it's going back to the collective bargaining table like we can't unilaterally do this ourselves. You.

C

Mean for the agreement to cover the autonomous schools as well.

O

To cover more schools that want it so.

C

I so the are currently aren't defined.

O

In those 50-plus, schools.

C

Sorry, if I was what the autonomous schools currently have a long school day, they.

D

C

Different pay agreements, its legacy of lots of different agreements built up over time, so we are going to get to almost complete coverage, with the exception, I think of one or two schools, maybe that have elected not to who are autonomous schools so with the rollout next year we will be. There is our impression.

D

C

If we're as I'm misunderstanding you let me know well.

O

I can dig into this level and I guess the question then becomes: is there a difference between a school that has extended learning time and then those who have the autonomy structure who get it through that model, if there's a difference and what they get from those models and I think there might be, and so that's a different question. Good I may be an autonomous school and not get this, but I get something different than that school yeah.

J

The the different classifications are Horace, Mann charters are in district charters, have more autonomy over how they can structure their teacher compensation and school day. Our pilot school agreement, which came in the early 90s, allows for both an extended day and a more professional development time in the allotted to us out of a very favorable rate.

J

So it's all about the compensation rate for the number of hours that we have, and so the pilot school agreement has a different structure that says that the first ninety hours are for free to the district, then from ninety to one hundred and thirty, five I believe are paid for by the central office and then anything beyond that can be paid by the school.

J

At a specific rate, innovation schools tended to come in at the same rates as what we did with our original cohort of turnaround, schools, which was an agreement through the joint resolution committee that we went through and had a specific compensation rate and then the final class of extended learning time came in with the schedule, a schools which was a negotiated rate and is different from the other two. So.

O

This could cost schools different levels of money out of their budgets for these different. No.

J

The extended learning time primarily is paid for centrally, so it's not paid for by school budget, but.

O

If you want an autonomous school, so one of those classifications and not in the ELT that's paid for by the central office, you could be paying more out of your individual school budget for the autonomy, which includes extended day, sure.

J

There's there's two cases in which we would see an autonomous school pay out of their budget, the majority if they went to extend the day even beyond what we had negotiated, which would make their day okay significantly longer than what we're doing in schedule. A the other is at the Boston teachers union school. They have a separate election work agreement where they compensate their teachers for the uncompensated time that we see by other pilot schools, as that's part of their original thanks.

O

Cool grandma topic for another discussion, but I'd love to know how how it sort of shows up in different schools extended learning time extending learning day, depending on whether it's coming through your autonomy structure or through the the ELT contract.

O

Just how we might show up I think that'd be interesting to know. I just had a couple quick questions. One is on this sheet here, this handout. Do you guys have this? It's a quality, full-day kindergarten! Saying that's about 1.8 million it's zeroed out. Can you explain that over.

C

The summer we got the news that the state had discontinued our funding on that and we picked up the difference this year. That was made possible in part by the fact that we have gotten good news and some of their sources of external funds, namely title 1. So.

O

This 1.8 was from the state give had, and so this has been put somewhere else in the budget. Yes, where is it? What was it put.

C

J

Was moved on to general fund dollars and those are grants and allocations that are directly to specifically our early education, centers and early learning centers. So when you look at their all funds budget from year to year, you'll see a consistent amount and is.

O

Is funded so that cut 1.8 yeah was put back in at 1.8 yeah.

C

And I think this is a prime example of this. You keep hearing myself and add a sweetie and Katie Hamrick is hitting on this point over and over again the.

D

C

Failed to come through with funding that we were expecting and the city once again is filling the void right.

G

D

C

We're a little bit of a broken record on it and there's lots of discussion. We can have about the bps budget and whatnot, but if the city does continue to pick up the slack when we lose funding from the state, no.

O

That's a real concern at or bps is another department, so you're exactly right. Just a couple more questions. One is the level three level four level five yeah.

C

O

Is that that sort of investment that you're making a big picture? What does that look like we've created.

C

O

And targeting just those schools, we've.

C

Created a reserve that our instructional superintendents are partnering with our budget team were reaching out to the schools who are losing enrollment and asking them about the supports that they need reviewing their request and then partnering with them to make sure they have what they need. I'm going to talk to this a little bit more in our next hearing. But we had a lot of concerns raised about this issue in our school committee process and we really looked at it with a lot of care.

C

There are 15 schools in particular that we were worried about that were low level, 3 level, 4 level, 5, schools that had budgets declining, they collectively lost about 4 million dollars, and we went and studied what were those four million dollars paying for and about three quarters of. It was classroom capacity that they that they didn't need anymore to have fewer students, and but there was about a quarter of that money.

C

That was for the discretionary things that would have supported the school overall and that's why we implemented and adjusted our proposal to add the reserve so that we could make sure that we were supporting them as they had those supports and enrichments that are part of what school should have. The funds are being focused in particular on brighton and excel, but we're running a process right now. That invites all level three four and five schools with a declining enrollment to participate, and we have some of my colleagues who've been running that process in the audience.

C

If you want to hear more, we.

O

Can do greater but just big pictures, there's 15 school 15 school.

B

O

Just 1.25 million be dedicated to them, specifically looking at Brighton and Excel, and what can be done there exactly um so look forward to that conversation be. Can.

C

O

Have some of those schools yeah and then? Lastly, this is on page of this presentation on page 13, which I I think the numbers stop, but the page after 12 mm-hmm.

O

Can you so this is a way to student formula actually before we can get to that page and the school budget breakdown that you have here for the sixty three percent.

I

O

Sixty three percent is going to directly to schools in that in its entirety. Well,.

C

The shaded light orange, which is benefit yep a school leader, would not see that appear on their budget, but it is paying for the staff that are on their budgets. Okay,.

O

And the sixty three percent, what does it? That's? Five hundred thirty seven million yeah.

C

The sixty three percent is a five thirty, seven plus the 112, plus that teeny sliver is ELP. So.

O

So 537 less 112, that is the plus plus.

B

O

Is go to schools, but the schools won't see that 112.

C

Schools directly see the 537 okay.

O

Good and then lastly, my question is weighted student formula and on slide 13. When you talk about- and this is my last question- thank you- I got the I, so obviously bps allocates 45 percent of its budget through weighted student formula, but there's an additional 8% through other rule based allocations. What is that we.

C

Have a series of other things that go to schools in a formula that aren't technically part of wsf, so, for instance, of nurses or a position, we call kosis who support special education, and we have what's called an allocation tracker that looks like this sits on our website and tracks. Every single dollar that goes to a school and you can see where it comes from and why it goes there. So this is what we're talking about when we say equity and transparency, and you can mapping.

O

C

Through all the things that happen outside of.

O

Technology in deeper discussion into the way to stream formula at some point: okay, that.

C

Will be in our next hearing. Thank.

O

A

You Summa I'm just going to take two a couple of quick things. First and foremost, the transportation has come up a lot, obviously which we'll get into and its own separate hearing, but I would like to acknowledge the work of John stedtke who's.

A

Not here today, he's got a very difficult job and I just wanted to acknowledge him as well as Rob and Carolyn McNeil, who have been extremely responsive when we changed the student of sign out looking for answers necessarily right now, when we change the student assignment process to be more conducive to walk zones, we knew that there might not be savings right away, but as I'm tracking enrollment, just in my district I'm, seeing a real transformation in enrollment numbers schools that formerly 5050 schools are now 85% in those first three grades.

A

When will we reap the rewards of having schools or families closer to the schools they attend? So and again we have a transportation here and just want to understand because we should be reaping some rewards and I know. Logistically, it's really difficult, but I don't see any reduction in buses. Will we ever see that question?

A

One waiting wait: we got into a little bit with weighted student formula and I believe, according to your numbers, out of the hundred and twenty five schools like 70, something eighty something actually budgets go up, so you know a third or less budgets go down, one of them being the Winship in my district, if not more active was like. Eighty, three thousand dollar cut I. First, let me premise this preface this by saying I believe in weighted student formula as a way to fund our budgets.

A

The funds following the kids based on need in circumstances, I think that's good for equity and other issues, but I would I want to know what that actual effect of that. Eighty three thousand dollar cut is going to be on the schools of one less teacher, one less aid. You know with what does that cut, and then we talked a lot about level. One through five I have many trees and a two. Maybe what is the? What is the difference between a two and a three?

A

How can we get our threes to two in a in a strategic way? And you know what what is that going to take for us to get there because I think when we get there, especially in my district, my districts kind of isolated in a lot of ways right, we're connected to the Boston Proper and the rest of the blossom by calm, app and Kia.

A

Graphically we've always been kind of out there. So I really want to know when, when we can expect the strategy that really targets level, threes to level toots and and then I'll pass it on to my good colleague, councillor sabi George, no.

G

A

Want, although and I'll ask him when we have those done.

G

Here, um thank you again. So I have some questions about schools with declining enrollment. What are we doing? I guess is there and the schools of declining enrollment receive the soft landing funds? True untrue, or some of them do the.

J

There were there were no soft landings for specifically for declining enrollment this year, but they will be receiving supports through the level three four three four allocations so.

G

Yes, can you just remind me, then, what a soft landing, what what's what our soft landings for yeah.

J

So soft landings when we implemented BP wsf here at bps, that was a lot of acronyms. We, we instituted specific rules based allocations to schools who are experiencing changes in policy and what that means is. If, in the change to weighted student funding, a school saw decrease in funding by X amount, we restored 25 percent of that. So it's a very straightforward formula for saying you lost a hundred thousand you're going to get 25k back as a way to ease the transition into the new into the new model.

J

We did soft landings for three or four years in the first couple years and anytime, we've made adjustments to policies, we've evaluated, whether or not we want to do that straight, formulaic, soft landing as a way to transition. The other way that we might give money to schools that are experiencing cuts is through either programmatic support, sustainability allocations, which are funding given to schools that can't afford their sort of core operating expenses and then the level three four supports that we're talking about this year in terms of sustainability or a programmatic support row school. So.

L

J

When you said soft landings, it's a very specific thing for me. So.

G

We're still we do soft landing are.

D

G

Any schools that get have received soft landing support or the sustainability allocations for multiple years.

J

So, in terms of soft landings for this year we have one soft landing, that's based on title one and needs shift in title, one allocations that went to one school grade or Egleston for sustainability allocations. We do have a number of schools that receive sustainability allocations. I don't have the number of schools that retain it, yeah, there's eight or nine of them. I, don't know how many of those schools have received in multiple years, but I can certainly get that I'm.

G

Curious about making sure that we are doing something else other than just put in cash into schools. Obviously, that's important for whatever the pending school year is, but anything, that's a repeat, there's something else going on at that school. We.

C

Have ten we have tens close who did receive the sustainability allocations for an amount, totaling 1.3 million dollars and.

G

But you don't know if any of those are we please I'm here, I'm.

L

Trying to make against well that's very I. Don't have my part of another time.

G

And it sort of ties into my follow up. Question is: do we know what schools are at capacity and what schools or what the percentage of schools are that are capacity, but then more specifically sort of the number of classrooms that are active assets? Yes,.

C

This year, thanks to Nate and his team, he Nate has recently taken over responsibility for our projections process. We have much better data now that tells us about utilization at the classroom level. So.

G

We do have that advantage of schools that are at capacity and what's the percentage of classrooms that are our separate paths. We.

C

Would be happy to take a look at that and get back to.

G

Them because then I want to understand or I think that it would be helpful for us to understand why schools are at capacity or not at capacity yeah and why there are shifts and populations is it you know. Is it the great configuration problem? Is it there's a local charter school that there's been a significant change at that school like the pending loss of advance, work or a neighboring school has added excellence for all, or something like that. So I think it's really important to understand both anecdotally, but also have the data back up.

G

Why kids are either leaving or not our families are leaving or not selecting a particular school, because I think that helps us make better decisions for all of our school communities going forward with. Do we look at that data at all? Have we sort of done any exit surveys or something like that? Yes, yeah.

J

So we're there's a couple different ways that we're thinking about it exactly the way that you're mentioning it in looking at program designs of specific schools. So we did a design workshop with the schools in East Boston to talk about how they're structured and where we see challenges in the way that students flow throughout the school. So a very simple example that we've talked a lot about is in a school where they have a single-strand program for ëall students. The students should be exiting that program as they progress in their language development.

J

And so, if you have one classroom in k2, one classroom in grade one by grades, two and three kids are leaving that program and moving into the gen ed setting. There's not a lot of influx of students in those grades to then backfill those classrooms.

J

So we start to see classrooms in East Boston, where we have a huge premium for space, half full or or three-quarters full, and so we're starting to think with those schools about how we might design or configure each of the schools in concert as as a neighborhood or as a pairing schools. Together to get better utilization and then there are always the places where we see external factors like charter schools, opening up that then cause a one time shift in the enrollment patterns of those schools.

J

We've done a better job of collecting historical enrollment patterns across the schools. To evaluate is this something that is a one-time challenge that a school is experiencing, and then we expect it to stabilize, or is this a multi-year pattern of a school struggling and there's so many different ways in which a school can be either set up to compete against charter schools, or you know some of our schools in South Boston.

J

We see challenges with the home-based plan and it leading to not enough family, selecting the school or having the ability to select the school and then also in Brighton. You know there were a number of changes this year, including the Jackson man and and just sort of thinking, smartly about how we can evaluate space, classroom space and then enrollment patterns and there's a sort of a big area system here in Boston that we're getting better data on well.

G

Speaking of that system and mentioning South Boston, as you all know, my kids go to the Perry. It has a assignment problem with the waterfront, as does the btu school, with cemeteries surrounding it. Have we fixed that.

J

We did make a change to what we call our option school policy for this year and the option schools are in the student assignment plan, you're guaranteed a number of tier one schools to your to schools, to your three schools and then what we call option, schools which are schools where we think we can. We have available either catchment area issues or their space so that more families can choose those schools. Both the btu school and the Perry school were designated as option schools this year because of small catchment areas. What we found it.

J

The student Simon plan is a function of your your status as a school, either option or tier, and then the number of schools in the area and because the Tainan Blackstone and the Perkins are closer to London. No I'm.

J

Talking about the the Condon is the level one school highly chosen is right in the middle of of South Boston, but it's the Blackstone that actually causes problems for the Perry, because families that live on the west side of South Boston end up getting the Blackstone as an option, because it's closer than the Perry as an option just the way, the algorithm, because it's a straight line, and so you know, as I mentioned it's a pretty complicated system.

J

There were some things that we thought were going to solve the problems at the Terry and then, when we go to implementation, we see that it didn't actually add that many families on to the list to choose it in in k1 or k2 the entry-level grade, because of the number of schools that are in the central part of the city that you're actually closer to. If you live on the western side of Southie, now.

G

Is the black stone in that sort of scenario? Is a black stone, a school that has wait, lists or open seats, or is that I feel like that's a highly chosen school.

J

It's a big school and there are a lot of families that can choose it so I think there's a lot of people who do choose it, but there are.

J

It is a school where you can have a pretty good chance of getting in for rounds one and two and the assignment plan. I can get the exact numbers in terms of waitlist for the schools but I'm.

G

um I'm curious how we, how we can go about fixing this with some incremental changes, because I think sometimes that's all we need now you're talking about families leaving the district, not choosing the district I'm. A huge proponent of AWC I. Think it's great that we're adding excellence for all.

G

My kids have been invited to AWC, but if the wait list has never actually sat in AWC see, but I am in I'm a huge proponent of it and to hear that it there there are steps to have it disappear over time and be replaced with excellence, for all is a problem for me and I think that we could extend that conversation to advance work or advanced placement classes in high school honors programs in high schools pack, the exam schools, the three exam schools in the city of Boston or the ice Academy, which requires an application process.

G

I think we have to give opportunities to families for different differentiated learning, experiences for their kids and I know. I know, councillor Baker brought it up and his round of questioning and it's a concern of mine and a significant concern to hear that we're. Looking to replace advanced where classrooms over time for excellence for all now, can you just a superintendent remind my.

B

Mate, correct, we didn't say we were going to replace aw.

G

I guess you do say clean earlier, you afraid of councillor Baker alley and it didn't.

N

Really sound clear to me, but it seems like to me my opinion. The pathway is towards phasing it out. That's the way I took though I heard.

G

That you were looking for every classroom for every kid and I. Certainly support inclusion in all of our classrooms, but advance work is a track. I'll call it a track that we need to I think support over time as a district. So I guess, if you want to articulate for me a really clearer for me so I understand where you think whether it's four years, eight years or 12 years down the road, where does advance work way to advance where classrooms exist in the City of Boston I.

B

Would I think it's critical to underscore that? Currently we have a system or currently we have a system where you have 10 percent of students in Boston, Public Schools. Fourth, through sixth grade this should say prior to excellence, for all, we had 10% of boston, public school students that went to events where classing 90 percent I went to general education of the 10%. That I went to. We look at the difference in demographics. It's very cut along racial, cultural, linguistic aligned, socio-economic lines.

B

Our goal with excellence for all is to provide more inclusive settings settings in all our schools where parents are going to want send their kids because they believe it's a very rich curriculum. It's rigorous and there's a lot of enrichment. Now, if we I've had many parents come to me and say I'm, actually not choosing to go to a vanskor class for my child, I want to keep my child in his or her current school, because we know fourth to sixth grade will be as rigorous as a van score class.

B

That's a choice that that parent is making if parents still continue to choose to send their kids move their kids after third grade to advanced world class. If there is that demand, then we will continue offering a van swear class, but all I'm saying is that if we raised a rigor and provide more learning opportunities for students across the system, maybe parents wouldn't have to move their child into a AWC class, but ultimately it's. This is going to be driven by the quality of programming that we can provide and impairing choice.

B

That's why I can't answer at this time whether there will be advanced world class in eight years from now. I. Don't think that's a fair thing for me to answer so.

G

Could you just tell me, and then I'm gonna drop for now, tell me just I know you mentioned it before how many of excellence for all classrooms do we have in the district? We.

B

Have thirteen excellence for all fourth grade classrooms and we will have 13 excellent for all 5th grade classrooms.

G

And how many advanced work classrooms do we have currently.

B

I might need to get some assistance on that. Does anybody have how many AWC programs we have currently give.

C

Us a minute I'm sure we can pull it.

G

Over the next few minutes, and then my follow-up question will be, how many are we going to have in the coming school year and then I've heard conversations about some schools already notifying parents that have been accepted to the upcoming school year advance work that that classroom after school year 1718 will go to excellence for all. We.

B

Have the same number of AWC programs and classrooms this year, as we had last year, we're not I'm.

G

Asking what will have next year will we still have the year we.

B

Don't have any plans of making any changes so.

G

I'll, wait: do you have those numbers sorry I'll get.

J

Them in time, perfect.

G

um I'll save my rest around.

A

Right now, let's look back sent thank.

H

You so much so since we're talk line is at what point: where are we going to discuss the 50 Boston public schools that are losing funding? I? Think that's significant, that for our body to know is that an accurate number.

C

So the next hearing, the subject of school budgets, we have data here, we'd be happy to talk about it now as well. I think.

H

It's important simply what, since were 30,000 feet to have 50 of our one hundred and twenty four hundred twenty five schools losing funding. I. Think that's something that all of the counselors should know I'm going in and in particular for those who are district counselors for people to understand that this budget is actually going to affect us against significant numbers. Number of schools, possibly about forty percent of schools in the district, I believe.

C

The number fifty came from a table that was released on February first, the start of our process with the School Committee, a couple of things have changed and since normal course of doing business over this period, we're releasing reserves to schools which increases the money on their budgets. I think the table that you were looking at was wsf only and there are the other allocations to schools on top of wsf. So when you pull those things together, I'm getting something around. Ninety.

C

When you fully load everything that a school would be getting both wsf other rules based allocations that appear on their budgets and ELP, the funding to schools increases at ninety six of our schools, but.

H

That's not accurate because when you add ELC is a new program right. That's.

C

H

So if you add ELT in that's a that's a that's, not it doesn't allow us from year to year to determine, if there's an actual increase in the word that you used earlier around maintenance budget right. So the issue here is that if you have an already underfunded school, that may not have the supplies that it that it means that you now have a young person spending an additional forty minutes, and is that a good thing? So, can we back that, like I, think that's just that yeah.

C

H

Think in this this will be my last budget cycle in this way, I think it's important that we actually use what we've used in the past. I, don't know and I, don't know what the conversation has been with the chair, but at least for me, as chair of Education, we've always looked at numbers in a specific way, and so this methodology change doesn't allow us to understand because I'll tell you what happens to us.

H

What you guys say: 96% of schools, are all set and we're all going to get calls from from parents and in schools that were cut so I. Just I think we need to understand the very real truth relative to what year over a year, is that forty, nine schools are getting cut in it. This may not this this.

H

You may not have this data, but I think it's important that the council understand the number of schools net-net year over a year that are getting cut with prior to the new programs being added in, because that distorts whether or not that that school actually is is receiving additional funding or not. We.

C

Would certainly be happy to provide the full table updated based on the school committee vote from March 22nd with all the funds, so you can see with and without ELP. That's no problem.

H

J

What did it say that the total number of schools that see if you look at the all funds budget on the school level, the total number of schools with declining budgets was 49. That does include the former Madden Hunt school and- and so that's that's the just schools that would look at their total budget and see it go down.

J

In a very simple case, you will get calls from families and from parents were saying things are being cut from my school, even when the budgets go up, because principals are making school level decisions to change from art to music I. Remember from last year we had a school community who was upset about her loss of a music teacher, but it was because they were deciding to to hire at our teacher instead and.

H

It's my contention that every single school in the Boston Public School should both have art and music. It shouldn't be a or it should be a man and our young people deserve that, and that's actually why I believe that this budget is underfunded. I also want to know. John was brought up earlier that the budget, the opportunity and achievement gap task force actually opposed this budget. They spoke on record as opposing this.

H

This budget, as it as it stood, I, think it's important for us to drill down on a topic that we had to deal with. Two years ago, I haven't heard any conversation about adult education and I'm told that that has been cut.

H

So it's not actually top-line adult education and the City of Boston has existed for over 140 years. It's a critical component most of the program. The the individuals who are part of the program have children in the schools, and most of them are ended.

H

Many of them are individuals who need access to language, opera, I'm, sorry, second, language opportunities, so I think it's really really important that English language learners and in the city that we are speaking about sanctuary status and things of that sort that were actually consistent across the board relative to those components. So can I get an understanding of where we are with adult education.

J

With the adult education department, current all funds budget is increasing by thirty five thousand, which is roughly three percent increase. There are not plans to decrease funding to adult education in this budget. Okay,.

H

What's the what's.

J

The budget, the total budget for in the adult education department is 1.1 million 1.1.

H

Women, what plus the 35k.

J

Sorry, that's inclusive of the 35 okay, okay,.

H

And I think it's also important to look at Brighton, High School, as well as excel, um so one what what percentage of teachers were rehired and what are the demographic data of those teachers.

B

We'll have that information for you, but it's important to know that we are just at the very beginning of our iron process for Brighton High, School, okay,.

H

Because I'm very worried so far, because my understanding is that very few teachers of color have been rehired, and that is that is a in. We will go back to the diversity component and we will have those and look forward to having that data so that we have an understanding and I would do. I would love for you to break that out.

H

I'd also like to get an understanding of what type of financial supports that both of those school communities I will be receiving to help them in their turnaround status, because we've had conversations that we obviously don't want to lose any more schools to the state. So are there a financial component attached to both of those schools so.

B

Let me start off by saying: we will absolutely provide the data on as I on a demographics of a Reese tapping process or teachers. Who'd come back to Brighton, High School we'll have that available, we'll also have available for it. So as well as I said, we are very beginning of the process, but I'm very optimistic that we will have a more diverse Brian.

K

B

Staff for next year we have I did asks for the pool like the teachers who are being considered over about 60% of teachers who are being considered, who are in applicant pool or teachers of color. So we've been very targeted in our outreach for diverse candidates for those schools, so we will have that data for you once we staffing is completed in terms of financial support. We.

C

Have financial data available now, would you like us to go into it now or do you want to hold it further? An excellent.

H

Can I, if you can actually get it, get it to us for next week if you could get it to my office before they'll, be actually very helpful? Okay um and then I guess the other couple of areas that I did want to touch on the be we need. We need the truth. So when you bring us data about transportation- and we all questioned it last year, because we've all been here- and we know that you you're not going to save 10 million dollars in a year.

H

So it's not okay to come back and say: hey. We meant two years you passed in your homework and now you come back and say: no, that's not what we wanted to submit so I just think in terms of the integrity of the budget process.

H

It's a lot of money right, and so we knew that the savings and I think every against against me. For my colleagues, but I know the chair I'm, as well as of my vice chair, actually question that that component and now we're back this year and we're actually asking to increase the transportation budget. So I just think that that is.

H

It is critical that we have accurate data in front of us and we, when we question this and drill down and then now we come back, and we know that we did that you did not save ten million dollars in that one calendar year. That is problematic in terms of the integrity of this process and I. Think I again, I won't sit in this seat to ask that question next year, but I think it's really important that we have accurate data relative to what's going on and by the way.

H

We also know that you get hurt by the number of charter schools seat right so when that number goes up, that also means that your transportation budget is probably going to go up and we're not receiving the reimbursement that we should receive. We need to be able to compute that, in terms of the calculations that we have and again it's no there's no blame there. We understand that's how it actually worked so, but we need, in terms of our budgeting process, to be able to to have that understanding.

H

I guess the one other one yep do.

C

You mind if I respond to this.

H

C

Mean to in Georgia counselor, but there are a few things that would matter more than the integrity of the process here and our honesty, you know we take this exceptionally seriously. I think we had a pretty frank conversation last year about the fact that we were setting a very aggressive target for the transportation department.

C

I am proud that we're going to hit it and I'm proud that we're going to hit it.

C

Even though it's going to take us two years, the Nate sometimes says we should be calling our transportation line our equity line of our budget, because it is how we think about what schools our students have access to, and what we sat up here and said last year was that we were trying to wring every possible savings out of the transportation before we change student assignment policies and to be able to save 10 million dollars without changing what services we offer to families I think is a real accomplishment. Of course, I wish.

C

We had accomplished it in our first year, but if I think we're going to be able to accomplish it, but we'll know by September that were on track to hit it without having to make any changes to the student assignment. Is it accomplishment, but.

H

We sat and we were- and you weren't here at the time and neither was a superintendent. We knew that and it was in year 7. They were grandfather, there's grandfathering in this process. It wasn't until year 7 that there was going to be a 10% because I think was about 9 million dollars at the time right. So what we've seen over the course of that time, as we've seen the budget go out and that quote-unquote savings go down below at 1010 percent.

H

So the reason why this is significant is because we knew that you weren't going to save it and we brought it up last year and a goal is not hitting a goal. Actually is not successful. If it takes an additional year, goals are measurable and I actually have a time frame attached to them. So I think that's important and I think it's helpful for us to understand by the way, most of let's unpack that most of the the budget that you have to spend on transportation, you don't control.

H

You would you're statutorily mandated to make sure that special education students are taken back and forth to school. You're statutorily mandated to make sure that charter school students are taken back and forth. So we just want accuracy here: I'm not and there's, there's no blame there.

H

I guess the one other component around transportation is the budget does still does not include a bus passes for all high school students which, when you speak about making decisions about where young people go to school, it is significant that many young people might even and families might even be making those decisions based on not the programmatic offerings, but how far that school is away from them, so they can get a bus back and a reflection of bus passes for all high school students is actually not in here. Are there empty K, early, ed seats.

H

Because to set, what do you mean by early as well k0 k1 Louise? Why I'm bringing this up like the Perry school right, so it this becomes an issue where if there are seats and what I've had parents say to me, I'll take my child anywhere relative to getting them into an early education seat and so a place like the Perry, where the computer sees the water as part of the catchment area and blocks people from getting in there.

H

So my question is: are there seats that were not using across the district that that could actually mean that we would see a larger increase in early ed seats in the City of Boston I hear I want.

J

To differentiate between two types of early education, empty seats, but first are those that we hold available for unidentified special education students, and this is particularly prevalent at the k0 level. We have an obligation to go and find students who will be identified at three years old for special education and have a seat available for them. This also exists in some of our inclusion classrooms, where families see an empty seat and get frustrated by an empty seat, but it's for a student who may be identified as requiring an inclusion classroom in March or April.

J

We need to have those classrooms available. The second part is available classrooms, K, 1, general education seats throughout the district. We've done a better job of filling K 1 classrooms, as Eleanor mentioned, we're going to serve a hundred more students next year in k1 that we're anticipating and that's.

J

That is a greater number than the number of K one seeds, we've added, which shows that we're we're doing a better job of placing classrooms where students are demanding them and the final comment I'll just make about the parents who are willing to drive um there there kid to a k1 seat. That is not necessarily in a catchment area that tends to be skewed to higher income and a less racially diverse group, and so when we think about giving students access to k1 classrooms that are not quote unquote on their list.

J

There's some pretty serious equity implications that that would have to come into play and I. Don't think that that should be our strategy. We should think better about making sure that the students who are in the neighborhoods, where they're available k1 seeds, figuring out, why they're not accessing those feed but.

H

I think the issue is the that, in addition to the additional funding that you're putting forward, if there is a classroom that has empty empty seats and there are children who are seeking those seats, we are failing those families by not up by not connecting them, and we need to be smarter and more nimble in allowing that allowing for there to be a connection there and I understand around the the kind of class strata there.

H

But what I would say is those families deserve to have an opportunity to and they want to be part of the Boston Public Schools Council McCarthy was just speaking about people leaving the district, so these are parents who want- and we know that, there's high demand at k1 and you're probably going to keep those families till fit until fifth grade at least right. So we got to figure this part out right, because there shouldn't be classrooms that don't have the requisite number of students in that area.

H

We also know that the data shows you do better mm-hmm right, so you do better with in terms of graduation rates and all kinds of other persistence rates and things in that space. um I.

J

Will just say our k1 utilization rate is: is upwards of 96 or 97 percent? There's always some transitionary times where we have available seats before students can get assigned to them. But this is not an area where we have a lot of largely unutilized classrooms. Yeah.

H

The you have this reserve for level three four and five right, which is which is again I, think helping out level threes, I think couple pieces. One schools, like the curly um I think, is an amazing level preschool and I think for many reasons. The best way to change level threes I believe is for the state to change the way in which they calculate I. Think Boston is. It becomes disabled by the fact that Boston does great work in actually the change side of it, which only represents 25% and the 75% is represented by achievement.

H

It should be restructured such that I. This is fit should be 5050 because you're teaching people right, so they should be getting better and I. Think in many of the schools. If we were to rework the data, we would actually see in particular for schools that have english-language learners I'm at high numbers.

H

We've actually see boss, many more Boston, Public Schools, actually elevate in that space and I think there's great work, that's happening in many of our schools, but based on that state data, we don't we're not able to realize that, but but I just want to note. The McCormack school is losing nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So the the line that you have is for one point: two: five million dollars at just that one school is losing nine fifty right.

H

So how are those dollars going to be spent when we're acts and by the way, there's some amazing teachers over there who are doing amazing work with with young people who have many many obstacles? So I guess I want to understand how's that funding that I'm going to get allocated when you have one of the schools that would could use and I don't know of a bps school, that's sitting on extra million bucks in some back room and and and that that they are using yeah.

J

The McCormack middle school I think we're seeing this across our traditional middle schools that families are not choosing them as an option at the same rate that they have in the past. Part of this was our expansion of K to eight, particularly. The Condon was one of the schools that the expansion of K to 8 for the Condon has greatly affected.

J

The number of students who are enrolling at the McCormack and so part of the reduction at the McCormack is to get them to a size and structure that makes sense for them and counselor savvy George. When you were mentioning how we're working with schools to think about utilization, one of the things that we want to do is work with schools to identify what is the right size and at the McCormick's. One of the things we did was. We had put five cohorts of middle school students into their sixth grade one year.

J

It turns out for scheduling purposes. Five cohorts is a really bad number of classrooms to have, because if you have five and sixth grade five and seventh grade five and eighth grade, you of 15 and the middle school schedule tends to work in numbers of four. So you end up having a half a teacher or sort of this really inefficient schedule, and so working with the McCormick's over a couple years.

J

We've kind of understood that we want to be at four six or eight cohorts in their entry level grades, and so some of this was being intentional about bringing the enrollment down so that they can eliminate a half teacher and make their schedule work more efficiently and, and so the number of when we mentioned earlier for these schools that are experienced in declining enrollment, they may be losing classroom staff, which is disruptive and can be a difficult change for principal to make. You have to let go of a teacher.

J

You have to decide who's no longer going to be returning to your school, but it's not discretionary spending. You just have less classroom, and so what we were looking at the level three forms of five schools we were trying to identify. When is it that they lost the ability to have either an assistant principal in the case of the more me school they've cut their one of their assistant principals or where have they lost, contracted services dollars or supplies dollars.

J

But the problem you mentioned earlier, and so the McCormick's is what is probably our biggest declining school. They have a large eighth grade cohort that has will be leaving and going on to ninth grade next year and it's being back filled with a sixth grade cohort that is much smaller. So that's why they they're going to have to experience some right sizing, a poor classroom staff and.

H

The enrollment process is not only. This is not, and it doesn't work in the same way that charters work right. So the enrollment you have a centralized enrollment system and so situations such as Madison Park, which, when they were making some changes there was an artificial, basically pause in terms of their enrollment, so I think. There's it's going to be important that we actually figure out this enrollment piece and I. Think that's for another time.

H

Last piece: Madison Park what what is in terms of the financial aspects! We have we heard of additional CVT funding that that is going to other schools. Where are the increases that are happening?

H

Madison, Park, vocational technical, high school counselor Baker brought up the fact that you know it's hard to find a partner right now, it's hard to find the electrician right now on their a pipefitter in the city of Boston, makes fifty five dollars and their envelope, meaning that's what their table is. These are really amazing opportunities for our young people, 1.4 million open jobs in in computing by 2020.

H

What what's going on at Madison Park, where we at relative to the funding in this in this budget?

H

C

Continue to support Madison, Park well above a traditional wsf funding. If you look at the tables, it can appear at first glance that there's a $700,000 cup. But if you compare the proposed budget to where we were at this time last year, at 100k and that's student enrollment shifts, so they do continue to have declining enrollment at Madison Park, and we are continuing to supplement their budget and.

H

I, just I just think we do need to understand that they're running essentially two schools there right. So the academic aspect of it is a vocational aspect of it and frankly, we need to step our game up in this space.

H

um We have a huge market here in the city of Boston that should be connected to actual authentic work opportunities in that marketplace, and we are not meeting the actual market to help our our young people actually, as well as the in consumer on the other end of this or the businesses, get the talent if we have or having less young people go through the vocational school, and that means less young people are going to be actually graduating from the vocational school and we will actually have a lower number of trained workers on the other one.

H

We need to have that alignment in our public school system with JA with the job market. That's out there if.

J

I could take them just a moment to just highlight the supplemental funding that Madison Park receives because we agree and invest significantly in Madison Park. Over and above their weighted student funding, so Madison Park receives weighted student funding in the same allocation as any traditional high school would receive. In addition, all students that enroll in Madison Park receive an additional vocational weight equal to forty one hundred dollars per student and then over and above that, Madison Park receives a programmatic supplement, larger than any school at 1.8 million.

J

So there there's significant investments in Madison Park over what a traditional high school would receive, and I just want to take a moment to highlight that, because it's we often talk about year-to-year changes in Madison Park we're not seeing the whole picture about the investment in the school as a district. If.

B

I may also highlight just two recent experiences: I have had with Madison Park students one this past Saturday, Madison, Park, juniors and seniors were part of a service state in partnership with District Council 35, our union trade partners, where they are creating a feeder pattern to their apprenticeship program from Madison, Park and Herb. Chambers is beginning an incredible partnership with us and we are having our students now gain experiences in their Auto Tech spaces.

B

So a lot of the this work is the heavy lift of Kevin McCaskill, the executive director in partnership with the central office, but there's great work that is being done at Madison Park they are in, they will be moving into year, two of their turnaround process. The Commissioner in a recent visit actually publicly common dated to his board the work that is being done now and said that in all his years as the Commissioner of Massachusetts, she's never seen the school move in a direction that it's moving in now.

B

So a lot of props to Madison Park.

H

Props to them, I just think we have to ensure that we continue to support them because I that school should have never fallen to a level four school. So it's on us to ensure that they have the resources I needed to make that happen. We owe it to those young people and the staff there tell.

A

Someone coming McCarthy I'm.

M

A great relationship between Madison, Park and public works with the body shop, painting and that stuff so important, and also the new print shop, which I just got a just got wind of that so I like that, put in a plug for that, but also get a little more information on that. If you don't mind because I would, if it is a it's an election year, I would love to have them do some of my stuff. If that's a, if that's possible or legal, we'll figure that out there, you.

H

Don't look good in orange yeah.

M

No, no no orange is not the new McCarthy I can tell you that much. My first question is about the teachers pool. Can you tell me how many teachers are in that pool and how much are we spending on that.

C

Last year, in our proposed budget, we had a three million dollar savings for SBC I'm, proud to SR. Spc is our acronym, suitable professional capacity.

M

You got it yeah, there's a lot of acronyms I'm.

C

Yeah, sorry about that sorry, um we had been spending 11 million dollars on the compensation for those teachers. We set a budget this year for 8 million and we are going to come in under budget for that. So we have more than hit it. You asked the number of teachers I, don't know what, as of today, the way that it works is that the pool naturally gets very large.

C

It usually goes north of 400 around this time of year, and then the majority of those teachers are placed, and so I think this year we were somewhere in the territory of around a hundred at the start of school I'm. Looking at David he's not in yet about a hundred at the start of the school year, and then it continues to come down as we place qualified teachers, and we also had package that teachers could elect if they wanted to just discontinue their employment with the district. Okay.

M

Second, question is VPS athletics. You know personally, I always did better in school when I was in season, whether it's football or baseball- and you know I- know that you're working diligently on trying to help the athletic department- and you know what what you got to be honest with your superintendent- was a tough shop. They didn't have a lot of things. It was some positives, but I think we all realized. It could use a lot of work. There's there's some issues with the exam schools that that I've been brought to my desk.

M

It's a little bit off track, but not not the 30,000 foot really a you know a direct issue with some of my constituents. I have a bunch of four instances, but I'll give you one. Young gentleman goes to Brian's school wants to play, lacrosse can't. Even though Latin has a team, it doesn't really make much sense that we have kids within our own pool not being allowed to pursue a sport that he or she wants, because they don't offer it at their school. Yet it's right down the street, so things like that.

M

You know I'd love to win the athletic common, the budget when we start addressing the athletics. That's one of the questions I'm going to be asking because I just feel like we're. If one person is has a better career because we put them on the field to put her on the field, we should be putting them on the field, whether it's soccer or lacrosse or Hooper or whatever and I know that in other towns. They do that. You know they have the you know. What do you call it? The I'm looking.

D

A

What is it regional, yeah, regional.

M

They go to the regional schools. You know one school has lacrosse everybody from school, a goes to school B to play lacrosse, and it's just a shame that if we have one person suffering for it, you know we just need to address that. Second problem: I have with the exams the athletic department the play ball program, the what I've heard is that the Playball program is giving money to middle schools. I know particularly the Roosevelt in the Mildred, have a two of them and I know.

M

There's more throughout the city from my understanding is that the the bowling building dropped the ball on this? No pun intended, which play ball, drop the ball, but and apparently there's a contract. That's not that hasn't been signed. So if you can look into that, find out why that hasn't been done and how fast we can get that done, because I know that the middle schools in District five rely heavily on that for equipment for coaching for all of that stuff and I think I think somewhere along the line is miscommunication there.

M

Okay, thanks thanks, come bigger. Thank.

N

You to pick up on the lacrosse thing a little bit that so what needs to happen there I think the O'bryant in the in Latin Academy could form a cooperative because flattened school has their own team, not part of a cooperative. This is what I was told anyway, but I have to agree with Tim miffed is, if there's a kid that wants to play lacrosse Latins the only Latins, our only lacrosse team that we have so we should try and figure out, because I would think.

N

If that gentleman is allowed to play lacrosse, then we would, we would I think generate more lacrosse plays lacrosse wasn't available to me when I was a kid I heard a pretty good sport but break time dr. Chen. Can you talk a little bit about the universal designs of learning like the principles? Where is it is it is it is it? Is it actual document that we could look at or like what's behind universal designs of learning, where.

B

They come from so UDL is an approach to curriculum design to get pedagogy. It's about designing the learning experience, so, students with all sorts of different strengths and assets can participate. So let me just give you an example: let's say you in a traditional classroom you're, the teacher may ask the students to read a particular book and then they come back and they answer a set of questions and write an essay based on a novel. That's a very traditional way of teaching a novel, the UDL.

B

You know what whatever Universal Design for Learning, you would say. Well, students you could communicate your understanding of the themes of look in other ways, whether it may not be an essay. Maybe it's done through some sort of roleplay.

B

Maybe it's done through some sort of performance and then the learning experience instead of it being just answering questions. Let's do a Socratic seminar, so students can participate orally as well. I remember as a principal where I had a student with cerebral palsy and the student could not vocalize his comments, but he was able to prepare for the Socratic seminar by we prepped him with the questions the night before he went home, prep, so his answers and he was able to play them through his assistive technology.

B

So that's your designing learning, experience that allows multiple students to enter into the learning process and we can get you more information, but that's a basically.

N

Life and it so there's so this is the way that that bps will be heading in the next. However many years this is this is a theory behind the.

N

What path will we'll be on in the next in the coming years? Yes,.

B

N

What I'm looking at is what I'm, what I'm looking to find out is: is there someplace I can look into what? What are the designs of learning? What can we expect in the next? You know ten years because not to bring it back to advance work. You talked about only ten percent of whoever in there and it's not reflective of the of the student population, but who is that ten percent in in is this Universal Design telling us to get rid of advance work and what you know so I'd like to first bring it back.

N

I got a little off track this, like can you? Where do we look into this, so we can see where our schools are going to be going in the next in the future. We're.

B

In the process of creating instructional position paper for how learning should take place in our schools, that should be completed by August, and we will provide that for you, but we can also get you more information for Universal Design learning. It's not just work that we're doing VPSs for that's happening nationally, as well as we beep as we get better as a society to be more inclusive in our learning spaces.

B

N

In and I think I brought this up is that design we're also talking about the environments were in the buildings we're in which is part of part of that whole capital plan does.

B

N

In with this here, yeah.

B

It's about our capital as well. The cultures would create in our schools about being more safe and welcoming in our schools in our classrooms. All students, okay,.

N

In back to the event to the advance work, you talked about only 10 percent, going through that that's 10% of the population I've seen I've seen one student take up resources from five different classes in in the school my children go to and and to now say well that it's almost saying well that 10% they're going to they're going to be able to learn anyway. So, let's kind of turn our back on then I'm very, very concerned about it. No.

B

Because numbers my event that.

N

The advance work that the the the the my experience with the ven advance work has been fabulous. My kids are both in advance, work and I mean in one week they did more homework than I. Did my entire school career I? Don't know if that's what it's about just all homework, but they seem to be really doing really well and I.

N

Just it concerns me that, whatever way we're looking at doing it, phasing it out or keeping it over here with excellence for all it almost says to me that we're looking at what we're looking at closing like there's, some kids aren't going to be able that will not be able to keep up the pace in advance, work or excellence, or also is it excellence for all and engineer or isn't the curriculum all going to be excellence for all in the schools that I'm still trying to figure out where we are on, because it's not very clear I can.

B

Only speak well, we have our plan for next three years right now. Well, next, two years, which is: let's focus on these 13 schools, where we have more inclusive settings and that see if we can truly raise the rigor raise the bar for these 13 schools. We don't have a plan beyond that at this point, but as a superintendent on my goal is I hope that we can raise the bar for even more students across the board. I don't want to communicate at all that we are getting rid of advance where class.

B

That is not the intention. I know that the counselor asked earlier how many AWC programs we have. We have 16 AWC programs with 40 classrooms. Total 11 out of those 16 classroom of AWC programs offer only grades four through five and five of those AWC programs only offer sixth grade. We are also experiencing a decrease in our various work class enrollment. Overall, it's a trend we're seeing recent years, but we don't want generalize why that is at this point, I see.

N

Some data in that way, and not here just off absolutely.

B

N

Those declines on because I don't think we're the experience that I just went through at then for people of people are trying to get that same experience in the school that that my children are in the advanced work program. There's people that would that would probably pay for you know in this the thought of the possibility of not that not being there Council McCarthy talked about people leaving that 10% is there because of advanced work. Now we lose that 10% and I think that 10% would add value to bps. We.

B

Will provide that data for you, okay,.

N

Thank you so thank you, mrs. yeah sure.

A

I'll sort of slightly to it, I.

G

Have I'll just save my one question, but just to add on to that.

A

D

Of my children or as I said.

G

To follow up with why families, maybe don't get into or to use their seat in AWC, one of my children was eventually called off the wait list for AWC, but for us, as a family, we made the choice to keep all the kids in one school as opposed to split them up, although our desire for all the kids was to go to AWC, we didn't choose that and we were very happy with the school that we were at so I think families. But we need to understand that data.

G

My families either choose to take the C's, don't choose to take the seat or leave the district I think that's the most telling information to have that data. You know and really conduct some thorough exit interviews with families, but speaking of families who leave. We heard yesterday that there's these 876 kids that are leaving VPS for the charter schools and it costs us sixteen thousand three hundred per kid. You know that money follows them out the door. Have we ever crunched the numbers to understand the actual value of that kid?

G

Because, with this weighted student formula, we know what each kid sort of what their financial value their dollar is. What's the actual, if that kid were to remain in bps, would they be a sixteen thousand three hundred all a kid, or would they be a higher amount or a lower I think Nate's getting what I'm asking I think.

C

So we protect schools from some of the cost. Swings that happen with enrollment we do not W SF is not intended to be fully loaded, 100% of bps cost, so we exclude from it. As you know, all the things I listed earlier: transportation facilities, the cost to have a principal and a school secretary, a number of the special education cost, and so our base funding for a student in WS F is actually $4,100.

C

Then we have a series of weights that go on top of that based on meat, and it can get quite a lot higher than that. So it depends on the needs of those students. What dollars would follow them with WSS and we intentionally protect schools, knowing that not all of the costs are variable, as I was just saying that some.

G

Of the other know, I get.

D

G

I know it's a complicated number but I'm very curious. What the what that kid would use up actually in a cloud.

D

And a happy one.

G

Of our in one of our schools, because they are not for the most now, the majority of those kids are not sixteen thousand dollar kids, yeah and I use. You know I've always used. My super triplet does an example. They each take three kids, three in the same classroom.

G

They absorb different they're, each a different value, number yeah and that's not like values of my kids but they're, not sixteen that they're, not all sixteen thousand dollar kids, but where that's what we're losing to the charter schools as part of this process, so I'm just trying to understand what the real value of that kid is leaving our system yeah.

J

We've done some some looking at the patterns, and part of this has to do with our weighted student funding model has to do with data that we have on students in our system, but that we wouldn't have about charter students. Well.

G

They're leaving us, we know we.

J

Know what they left, what they're sort of special education statuses when they left or that we may know if they've returned to us, with their special education statuses and with those costs arm, we started to look at some of the who exits and who returns to us I. Think there was a City Council hearing last spring presented some of the preliminary data. In addition, we have some students who leave parochial schools and attend charter schools, in which case they go from privately funded education.

J

To now things that come out of our our sort of chapter 70 funding, and then we would have to look I think we don't have as sort of sophisticated of a of a way of looking at the total cost of students include transportation costs right. So if I attend school, where I'm not eligible for transportation and then I switch to a charter school.

J

Even if my funding is exactly at the fifteen thousand I'm now more expensive, but I will say that I think that the charter school funding model and their lack of differentiating around funding based on student need is one of the biggest areas in which it is broken and where the city is a significant disadvantage. If our lower needs students lower cost to serve, students are leaving and going to charter schools, it drives up our average student cost and they don't have an increased marginal cost for serving the student. You.

G

Get that that's the perfect way to put it the lower cost to serve it. I think that's important. We talked a lot about that yesterday, with Chief Sweeney and I articulated, as well as a number of councillors articulated yesterday our desire to play a more active role in advocacy and made and I hope that you are all playing a very active role in lobbying at the Statehouse to just really change and improve this funding model.

G

So I promised that that was my last question things that I want it, the other things that I'll ask about, and certainly this isn't a limited list, but just a few things I didn't get to today.

G

There's some questions around school safety. I think that's just it's a national! We have a national awareness about school safety issues in all of our schools. I think that's something we need to talk about more actively and it's something that is no fun to talk about, but we need to get there.

G

You know I know we'll have a lot of conversations around tomorrow. Bilingual ed programs certainly build bps will be a big part of some of our conversations going forward, and then you know, I really want to see us get to a point as a district where we're talking about school start times, both the problem I have personally with the 930 stacks and our high schools, as well as the grade reconfiguration. So that's just a sampling of what I didn't get through today. Thank you, a chair, and thank you all for your time today and.

A

Just one information request: could you give get-get the breakdown of enrollment by grade all.

B

The ways we have that yeah.

A

I just curious it many years I've seen somewhat of a drop-off between our K 0 enrollment in around grades, 1, 2 or 3. The big drops off so.

B

A

The more than six.

B

Right, seven to eight and we see increase again that night, great okay, we.

A

Have revolving funds I, don't know who's staying for that, but want to take it we'll, take a 10-minute break and come back right at two o'clock. Okay, thank you. This this portion of the hearing is adjourned.

A

Axio mom the chairman of ways and means in the austin brighton district city councilor. Today's Tuesday April 25th I'd like to remind folks that this is a public hearing about both broadcast in recorded on our CN channel 82 and Comcast channel 8 I'd ask folks in the chamber to silence their electronic devices at the conclusion of the question and answer period from the council, we will take public testimony. The sign-in sheets are to my left by the door I'd ask that you state your name and any affiliation and residents.

A

We are here to discuss the Boston Public Schools revolving funds, dockets number, zero; five, five: zero, zero; five; five one: zero: five: five: two and zero five five nine I'd like to up introduce the vice-chair of Education Council, Randy, Soros, Fabi George, and let me read the dockets into the record: docket: zero: five: five: zero message in order authorizing a limit for the Boston Public Schools revolving fund for fiscal year, 2018 to support the maintenance and repair of BPS facilities, including custodial and utility costs for extended building time, floor, refinishing, landscaping and building repairs, receipts from lease permit for use and parking fees for boston, public school facilities will be deposited in the fund.

A

Bps will be the only unit authorized to expend from the fund, and such expenditures shall not exceed two million six hundred thousand dollars. Docket zero: five: five one message: in order authorizing a limit for the Boston Public Schools revolving fund for fiscal year, 2018 to repair and purchase Boston, Public Schools computer technology, including computers, mobile devices and instructional software.

A

This revolving funds shall be credited with any and all receipts from equipment, sales and repair fees for bps technology receipts and resulting expenditures from this phone and shall not exceed 1 million $500,000 docket zero, five, five two messaging or order authorizing a limit for the Boston Public Schools revolving fund for fiscal year, 2018 for Boston public school transportation costs, including bus and public transportation cost.

A

This revolving fund shall be credited with revenue received by the Boston Public School Department, for the provision of transportation to groups and entities for field trips and activities other than transportation to and from school receipts, and resulting expenditures from this fund shall not exceed one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars and docket zero. Five. Five nine message in order authorizing a limit for the Boston Public Schools revolving fund for fiscal year, 2017 to support the maintenance and repair of bps facilities, including custodial and utility costs for extended building time floor, refinishing, landscaping and building repairs.

A

Receipts from lease permit for use and parking fees for BPS facilities will be deposited in the fund. Bps will be the only unit authorized to expend from the fund, and such expenditure shall not exceed two million six hundred thousand dollars. I just want to explain that last docket is an amended docket referring to the technology I'm. Sorry, the maintenance and repair BPS facilities fund from one point: eight million dollars to two point: six million dollars- and at this point let me turn it over to Nate cooter from my VPS vaccinate.

A

J

You chairman, the for revolving funds, provide bps with the flexibility to be able to collect revenue from non city sources and be able to spend the revenue collected for specific purposes designated in the revolving fund accounts. We have three: revolving fund requests, FY 18. This is different from last year we have eliminated the use of one of our revolving funds, because it's not an active account that we're using. So we do continuously review, which accounts we need and are keeping these revolving accounts, because there is activity in all of them.

J

The first one as mentioned was the facilities revolving fund. It allows us to collect revenue when a third party rents a space either for an activity at night or if we have a long-term lease allows us to collect revenue from that. We use the revenue in that account to pay for maintenance and repairs at our buildings. So it is a direct benefit to our facilities. The technology account is used primarily for collection of fees in the event that a employee, laptop or cell phone gets damaged.

J

The employee is expected to pay for the repairs on that. This is the way that we collect that the other large source of funds for this is at the end of our three years. We have our laptop for learning program, which provides teacher laptops there all Apple products, that, after three years, we have sold the fleet of laptops and use that money to then start the next Refresh of the laptop. So that's the largest portion in the in the existing funding under the technology and the final one is for transportation for field trips and athletics.

J

When a school fund raises for a field trip or has money in their nonprofit account that they want to be able to then use to pay for a field trip. That is the mechanism which is revolving fund, so that you'll see is a much smaller dollar amount. 125K is a limit.

J

That's because we don't do that high of a volume of those transactions, but we want to make it available to all schools to be able to do those those field trips and the final request is the current year increase for FY 17 part of working with our city partners in understanding the use of revolving funds. It does allow us the flexibility of rolling funds forward from one year to the next, but in order to do that, we need to increase the amount that we collect or the limit basically for us to collect.

J

So this body authorizes the revolving accounts set at a specific amount in the case of the facilities for various reasons, we rolled forward money into fy17 and have started to collect additional revenue for fy17 that will exceed our set limit, we're requesting that you increase our limits so that we can continue to collect the revenue until we have our planned expenditures in place. Great.

A

Let me introduce my friends from district 6 matt o'malley, my other friend from Winchester, just for three Frank Baker and I'm, going to turn it over to also a nice hobby. For me can't.

G

Think I'll be very quick if I do promise very quickly on the facilities fund, increasing it to 2.6. How much are we rolling over? Have we maximized almost maximized at one point, eight we're looking to double it. We.

J

Have part of the reason when we look at the end of the year at some of the programs we have the opportunity to. We want to make sure that we're fully expending our general fund dollars. So we made the decision to not expend some of the revolving fund dollars for some of the summer maintenance that we do including floor screening for our basketball courts, and so we rolled forward. This would double the amount because we had rolled for the maximum amount. I.

G

Gotcha and then is there a maximum individual expenditure out of say two facilities fund, for example, or could it could one project to use half the fund or the whole fund potentially, is this more for smaller repairs? This.

J

Tends to be for smaller sort of maintenance projects. I think the limit is not necessarily on how much we could spend in a single project, but just in sort of the purpose of what we're using it for or this is for more basic maintenance anytime. We start to get into large-scale repairs that we could exhaust the whole project were then talking about capital projects all.

G

Right, and so this is a fistful of these- are this is a void in capital improvements. This is literally small repairs and.

J

D

Know reason I ask.

B

G

Do how aware are individual schools and the administrators in those schools aware of the ability to maybe access some of this funding.

J

Accessing this funding would be sort of similar to the way that they would make requests for other basic maintenance and repairs through our our facilities department, and so the facilities department is sort of tasked with collating and prioritizing projects. Schools could not there's not a process by which schools would apply for the revolving fund dollars different from different from the regular sort of maintenance and repairs project. We.

A

J

Try and oh sorry, no.

B

J

To say we do try and for the schools that are being used more because we're collecting fees so, for instance, if there's a basketball court, that's more popular and it's being used more and therefore has more maintenance. We will try and then reinvest that money. In addition, part of the collection is fees for parking. The most notable is the McKinley schools right by Fenway Park. We do have an agreement where they receive some of the shared revenue from that, but we taken the money in the revolving account.

J

We provide them with the general fund, supplement to be able to serve their students and use that money at their discretion, so it doesn't actually show as part of the revolving fund. One.

G

Of them, one of the themes, I think, will see a you know. You'll hear some questions for me, but from others during the rest of the budget process. This coming cycle is restrooms in our schools. I.

C

G

Think that some of the fixes that could happen in some of our schools restrooms are smaller dollar fixes, and this would need to be a great fund to access some of that, but that that's it for me. Thank you very much. Thank.

A

You a Councilwoman Thank.

I

You mr. chair good afternoon, again Nate so I mean this is one of the more or one of the less controversial aspects of any budget. The revolving fund, so just to make sure I have it right and those paying attention. So these are different from the budget insofar as they are continually their pockets of money that are continually replenished by the same or a similar mechanism.

I

Be it a school rents out a gymnasium for to a church, for example, I know that seems to be happening with more frequency or the parking lot and that money remains in that school. So if the Jane Doe school in West, Roxbury rents out their auditorium for an adult basketball league, for example, in non-school hours, that money will stay with the Jane Doe school, it's.

J

Not it's not one-to-one. In that way, we have the obligation to collect money for a purpose and then use them the revenue that we collect in a revolving fund for the designated purpose on it. In the case of the facilities, one, we collect fees for the usage of our schools for the idea that it was, it will increase the wear and tear on the building Shore and then we we then will reinvestment in schools.

J

It's not necessarily the exact same schools, but it's sort of looking and using it to be able to improve the sort of repairs overall and.

I

Are we being competitive in our pricing? So how about the McKinley, for example, because that seems to be the one example? What do we do we contract with a independent operator that runs the parking lot to charge for spots I, actually.

J

Don't know the answer to that question: I apologize I can find out both two things: one. If we, if we ever do an external sort of outsourced, the operation I don't see expenditures in the account to pay that vendor, but I'll find out more in terms of competitive pricing for our facilities. I know there's something that we've talked to the facilities team about and how do we evaluate sort of our structure for a basic permit for one a night?

J

We have not adjusted the costs recently, so I don't know how we would gauge the competitive nature of the renting the the Irving school on Sunday morning, for example, I, don't know how we sort of stack up I'm.

I

A little bit conflicted on this I, don't want to punish, you know damaged. Some of the partnerships that have endured for for many many years, on the other hand, in the other part is I, do recognize that bps has been in many instances, but not all, but many instances, good neighbors as it parking for you know when there's a snowstorm or whatever working with the neighborhood, but I do think. We have an opportunity and I'd like to explore this with you further offline of better leveraging relationships with our schools.

I

Parking is obviously a rarity, particularly with our business districts and I'm thinking of some of the more congested neighborhoods that could benefit from taking advantage of an amenity that would also generate revenue for a school so I. We don't to take up too much time, because this is a pretty pro forma airing, but I do think. There's an opportunity there to explore, and perhaps my colleagues and I may take that up at some point. So thank you.thank. There's a charity right.

A

Baker's time well, I think that concludes the revolving funds. I want to thank you for your lengthy testimony today. We're going to see a lot more of you in the coming weeks before and this hearing stands adjourned.